West Virginia football could face scheduling hurdles

Nobody knows if football will be played at West Virginia this fall, but at least one game on the schedule is almost assuredly going to be nixed.

That’s because West Virginia is set to host Maryland Sept. 19 and the Big 10 Conference has announced, which the Terrapins are a member of, will be cancelling all non-conference contests.

The move is being reportedly made to better assure the safety of players and allowing conference teams to closely monitor their own institutions and trust that all protocols are being followed. Reports also indicate that the Pac-12 and even the ACC could follow suit in the coming days.

If the game isn’t played it would be the second time in as many seasons that the Mountaineers won’t play a football game due to outside circumstances after the 2018 matchup at North Carolina State was canceled due to Hurricane Florence. That game was not rescheduled.

The matchup is one of a two games series with the Terrapins scheduled to come to come to Morgantown in 2020 and the Mountaineers traveling to College Park next season.

For the Mountaineers that would shrink the schedule to 11 games with nine Big 12 Conference matchups to go along with the Sept. 5 season opener in Atlanta against Florida State, which has mentioned above is also in jeopardy, and a home matchup against Eastern Kentucky the following weekend.

But there are obviously still a lot left to play out in the coming weeks and months and this could be the first in several changes to the slate as the effects of the coronavirus takes its toll.

Already several programs have moved neutral site contests such as Wisconsin vs. Northwestern at Wrigley Field and BYU traveling to Northern Illinois from Bridgeview back to campus in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s fair to wonder if more won’t follow suit.

Could the Big 12 also look at following the same path when it comes to conference matchups, limiting the schedule down to nine games against the rest of the league? It’s certainly a possibility that this is the first domino to fall in several in regards to scheduling this fall as the uncertainty of the coronavirus continues to take its toll and numbers rise in areas of the country.

West Virginia has Big 12 games at home against Kansas State on Sept. 26, TCU on Oct. 10, Kansas on Oct. 24, Oklahoma on Nov. 7 and Baylor on Nov. 21. While the road conference games are Texas Tech on Oct. 3, Texas on Oct. 17, Oklahoma State on Nov. 14 and Iowa State on Nov. 28.

Obviously with West Virginia traveling so much for each game that in itself presents a problem but that is a bridge that will be crossed later in the process.

It goes without saying that if the ACC also follows in the same path, West Virginia will lose the contest with Florida State and will leave some openings to fill with little time to do it.

Such is reality with so much uncertainty abound, but that is where we’re at just a little under two months from when the season was set to begin for the Mountaineers.

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