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UPDATE: 5:49 p.m.: The NCAA has made it official that all fall championships are canceled.
The chance for college teams to compete for a Division I national championship in five sports this fall will not happen due to cancelations because of the coronavirus outbreak.
As pointed out by our friends at Anonymous Eagle, the 50% threshold has been passed with the cancelation of fall sports by the WAC, Southland, and Big Sky Conferences earlier today.
The NCAA required schools in each division and sport to have 50% of teams choose to go forward with seasons to hold their usual championship tournaments this fall. With today’s news, none of the five fall sports is above that threshold.
Here are the numbers so far from Anonymous Eagle:
Men’s Soccer: 111 out of 206 teams are already out, or 53.9%
Women’s Soccer: 175 out of 338 teams are already out, or 51.8%
Women’s Volleyball: 176 out of 335 teams are already out, or 52.5%
In addition we can add field hockey which has 79 teams participate, but nine of the 10 conferences that sponsor the sport have canceled competition. Of those 10 leagues, only the ACC still hasn’t made ending the season official.
The last sport is FCS football, which has already had 10 of their 13 conferences cancel the fall season as of yesterday.
The above should come as no surprise, particularly because the seasons cost money to complete and rely on media dollars and ticket sales from revenue sports such as football and men’s basketball. But now the six FBS leagues continuing to try and play football will be the only Division I student-athletes participating in games to count for a championship this fall. Those leagues are the American, ACC, Big 12, Conference USA, SEC, and Sun Belt.