San Jose State plans to have football this fall despite virtual classes at Cal State schools

Despite the California State University system planning for classes on their 23 campuses “primarily being delivered virtually for the fall 2020 term”, it looks like one CSU athletic director still thinks we may see football that time period.

San Jose State University athletic director Marie Tuite said today that the school plans to play sports this fall, and will do so without fans in 2020. If that’s the case it might have even more of an impact for the Mountain West, as San Diego State and Fresno State are also part of the CSU system and in the same conference as the Spartans.

This is a notable step forward from the statement released by the conference just a week ago saying “no decisions on athletics have been made.”

This could also affect the other D1 campuses in the system that don’t play FBS football, with sports like women’s volleyball and cross-country also taking place during the fall semester. Those campuses include Cal-Poly, Sacramento State, Cal-State Bakersfield (scheduled to join the Big West Conference next season), Cal-State Northridge, Cal-State Fullerton, and Long Beach State.

So does this mean we’re absolutely playing football this fall? Not at all. And because it’s coming from a school that’s in deep athletics financial difficulty anyway, it might be a sign of having to move forward instead of just wanting to move forward.

But it does show one-half of the most revered public education system in the world is considering having games played on schedule next year. And that’s probably a reason to be at least a bit optimistic.