WVU AD Lyons talks N.C. State decision to cancel, what could be next?
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West Virginia will not play N.C. State this Saturday on the football field as Hurricane Florence approaches the coast and at this stage it’s unclear if the game will be played at all.
The decision to cancel the game, originally scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Saturday, was made Tuesday morning as administrators at both schools tracked the path of the hurricane.
The focus of those discussions centered around the safety and welfare of the student athletes as well as the citizens of North Carolina, according to West Virginia athletics director Shane Lyons.
“These are not easy decisions to be made, there is obviously a lot of input from a lot of different people,” Lyons said.
While there had been some discussion as to possibly flip-flopping the home and home allowing N.C. State to travel to Morgantown this year and the Mountaineers to go to Raleigh next year due to the weather concerns, Lyons said that accommodating that is not as easy as it sounds.
That would have required ticket sales, providing food for the concession stands as well as securing the emergency personnel needed to hold a football game on short notice among other items. It also would have left West Virginia with only five home games next season.
Finding another location proved difficult as well and while the burden of that fell more on the home team N.C. State it was still a tough task with many areas expected to be affected by the hurricane.
As for the possibility of a makeup date, the two teams do not share an open weekend and at this time the administrators at each institution have not discussed many options but looking at the schedule it will be “very difficult.”
Regardless Lyons said that he will not schedule a game during the Mountaineers scheduled Oct. 20 open week. That decision is in large part because West Virginia is scheduled to host Baylor only five day later in a Thursday night contest.
“Anybody that knows football knows I’m not going to play a game on Saturday and turn right back around and play a game on Thursday night. I’m trying to help our coach staff and student athletes prepare each and every week and that would not allow them to do that,” he said.
As for the possibility of a makeup game during the Dec. 3 weekend, Lyons said that he plans to be in Dallas which would be for the Big 12 Conference Championship game. And the weekend after that would be “irrelevant,” because bowl games would have already been chosen.
If the Mountaineers do advance to the Big 12 title game they would have played 11 power five institutions during the course of the 2018 slate which could help soften the blow from the potential loss of N.C. State on the schedule.
The contract still states that N.C. State is expected to come to Morgantown next year with the Mountaineers paying a $300,000 fee to travel and expenses as the Wolfpack were scheduled to do with West Virginia making the trip this year prior to the cancelation.
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