The Houston Cougars lose to the fates again, maintain 0-0 record in 2020

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The Houston Cougars football game scheduled for this weekend has been canceled due to Covid-19.

“We understand this COVID-related decision North Texas has made to not play Saturday’s game and appreciate the consistent dialogue with our program by UNT Athletics Director Wren Baker, his administration and medical staff during this week,” UH Vice President for Athletics Chris Pezman said. “I am disappointed for our student-athletes who have continued to focus on competing this season and were ready to play this Saturday. We will continue to work to adjust our schedule with the hopes of playing as soon as we can.”

A play in three acts:

This is the FIFTH scheduled game the Coogs will have put on the books that won’t happen: Washington State, Rice, Memphis, Baylor and now North Texas have all been pulled because one of the two teams ends up with Covid-19, and the quarantined players as well as those separated from team activities via contact tracing aren’t able to move forward.

UH and UNT say they intend to make up the game, but we’ve heard that from the corner of Scott and Holman before. There just aren’t enough dates left in the season for all these games to be completed. And let’s remember Houston wasn’t exactly ahead of the curve when it came to testing of athletes and safety protocols earlier this summer.

The good news for Houston fans and players is there’s still an eight-game conference schedule that’s unaffected, and it’s not like they were favored to win the league in 2020 anyway: They’re +1000 to take home the league title at DraftKings Sportsbook as of now.

But it’s a long way from here to there, and for the sake of the players, we hope they get to kick off an intercollegiate football contest sometime soon.