COVID-19: Week 3 loses a sixth game as Florida Atlantic won't play Georgia Southern
The third week of the college football season has now lost six games because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Florida Atlantic won’t play Georgia Southern on Saturday. The Owls are dealing with a coronavirus outbreak and don’t have enough players available at each position to play the game. It was set to start at 3:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Source: FAU won’t play Georgia Southern in football this weekend. FAU had an outbreak early in the week and received more positive tests this am. FAU had an entire position group that wasn’t available. The game was scheduled for ESPN on Saturday.
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) September 18, 2020
The postponement comes after Georgia Southern played against Campbell in Week 2 without 33 players. Those players were absent due to a mix of suspensions, injuries and positive COVID-19 tests and subsequent contact tracing.
It also comes a day after Charlotte’s game against North Carolina was postponed. The 49ers would not have had enough offensive linemen to play against the Tar Heels because of contact tracing and quarantining.
Other Week 3 games that have been postponed or canceled include Virginia and Virginia Tech, BYU and Army, Memphis at Houston and Central Arkansas at Arkansas State. Houston was able to reschedule its Week 3 game after the game against Memphis was called off and is playing Baylor on Saturday. Virginia and Virginia Tech will play the Commonwealth Cup on Dec. 12.
That game between Houston and Memphis will likely be made up at some point over the season because both teams are in the AAC.
The game between the Owls and Eagles would have been a fun contest among two of the better Group of Five programs in the country. Florida Atlantic is in its first season under former Florida State coach Willie Taggart. He took over for Lane Kiffin after Kiffin was hired at Ole Miss.
As of now, there are just 20 games scheduled for Saturday. The light schedule is also attributable to the SEC’s decision to wait until Sept. 26 to start its season. With the SEC starting in Week 4 and the Big Ten (and potentially other conferences) starting in October, the college football schedule should get a lot heavier as the season goes on. We hope. As we’re seeing in Week 3, coronavirus outbreaks can quickly and easily postpone and cancel games.
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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.
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