Southern Cancels First Two Football Games Due to Pandemic

The slope continues to get slippier and slippier as the days and weeks pass bringing us closer to the beginning of football season as a nation we continue to contend with the global COVID-19 pandemic.

This past weekend a Louisiana State school has decided to forgo playing the first two games of their 2020 football season due to the pandemic. That school would be Southern University, back-to-back defending SWAC Western Division Champions.

According to an article by WDSU's Sharief Ishaq, the season opener was supposed to be played on a rather epic stage at Ford Field in Detriot (home of the Lions) against Tennessee State on September 5 but it has been canceled. The second game of the season has also suffered the same fate as the Jags were set to host Florida A&M on September 12 as their home-opener.

For now, the season will officially begin September 19 on the road in Huntsville, AL where Southern will square off against Alabama A&M. Their new home-opener will be set for the following week September 26 where they'll face Jackson State.

Southern University Athletic Director Roman Banks had this to say regarding the decision via an article on Southern's website.

"First and foremost, we are committed to and 100 percent focused on the safety, health, and well-being of our student-athletes, coaches, staff, and supporters. Pushing our start date back to mid-September gives our coaches more time to get student-athletes acclimated and assess and focus on their appropriate physical conditioning after such a long, unprecedented period with no supervised work-outs. A later start will also help accommodate a later-than-usual initial reporting date for football due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the preparations that our campus is making in anticipation of a return to in-person instruction this fall."

These are certainly scary times and as we push forward football seems as if it's more and more in danger of actually being played this fall.