Which college football teams and conferences have canceled?

The novel coronavirus, which has killed at least 160,000 people in the United States, shuttered college sports in March, canceling the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments and abruptly ending many athletes’ careers.

Schools and their leagues prepared for a return to competition this fall, and football players arrived on campus in June for voluntary workouts. But as the season approached, and the nation had yet to contain the virus, decision-makers worried about whether they could safely hold a season. The Big Ten and Pac-12 decided too much uncertainty still exists. So did two FBS conferences outside the Power Five. Now the other six FBS conferences must decide how and if they will proceed toward the 2020 season.

Here’s what you need to know:

As of now, 53 of the 130 FBS teams will not play football this fall. The Big Ten and the Pac-12 announced Tuesday their decisions to postpone the season. Outside the Power Five conferences, the Mid-American Conference and then Mountain West Conference, which include 12 teams apiece, have both canceled their fall sports seasons.

Old Dominion, a member of Conference USA, announced that it will not play this fall, even though its league plans to hold the football season as scheduled. Two college football independents, the University of Connecticut and the University of Massachusetts, have decided against playing sports this fall. After all the Power Five conferences adjusted their 2020 schedules, independents scrambled to find opponents. The Big Ten, SEC and Pac-12 previously announced plans this summer for conference-only slates, while the Big 12 and ACC decided to leave space for one nonconference game.

The six conferences that have not announced plans to postpone are the SEC, the Big 12, the ACC, the Sun Belt Conference, the American Athletic Conference and Conference USA.

College football leaders and university presidents across the country are mulling whether it’s safe to hold a season this fall. With multiple conferences set to begin play in less than a month and programs already practicing, decisions to delay the start of the season or cancel altogether will need to come soon. Those decisions would ultimately be made by the university presidents in each conference.

“I look forward to learning more about the factors that led the Big Ten and Pac-12 leadership to take these actions today,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said Tuesday in a statement. “I remain comfortable with the thorough and deliberate approach that the SEC and our 14 members are taking to support a healthy environment for our student-athletes.”

Florida State President John Thrasher said at a Tuesday news conference that he feels “relatively certain” the SEC is aligned with the ACC in its desire to play this season, while the Big Ten and Pac-12 were “vacillating a little bit.” Ultimately, those two uncertain conferences backed out of the season later that day. According to multiple reports, the Big 12 presidents met Tuesday evening and plan to continuing moving forward toward the season.

Power Five commissioners met over the weekend, and “two of those commissioners expressed some real concerns about continuing to play and they listed a number of issues,” Thrasher said. An alarming piece of information came from research that showed covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, could lead to myocarditis, the inflammation of the heart muscle. ESPN reported Friday that myocarditis had been found in at least five Big Ten athletes, plus some athletes in other conferences.

“That seemed to get a lot of attention nationally, and I think it caused a lot of the other conferences to say, ‘Let’s take a step back, let’s review where we are,’” Thrasher said, adding that ACC presidents met Sunday and addressed those concerns. “The issues that were presented — frankly, none of them we had not considered before.”

Conferences that have canceled the fall seasons are hopeful their teams will have an opportunity to play during the 2020-21 academic year. It’s unclear when a season would begin or how it would work. All four of the conferences that have announced fall cancellations also expressed their intention to explore competitive opportunities during the spring semester. U-Conn. was the only school that announced that its football team would not compete during the 2020-21 school year.

However, the logistics of a spring football season would be complex. The NFL scouting combine typically begins in late February before the NFL draft in April. Even if that timeline is adjusted to accommodate a spring season, some NFL-bound stars might choose to opt out rather than risking injury by playing.

There are also concerns about the feasibility of holding the 2020 and 2021 seasons during the same calendar year because of the physical toll that could take on athletes.

When asked on the Big Ten Network if a spring season could be held, former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said: “No chance. You can’t ask a player to play two seasons in a calendar year.”

It’s unclear how well the country may have contained the coronavirus by January or whether a vaccine will be available. Given that the Big Ten and Pac-12 felt it was unsafe to proceed with a fall football season, progress in slowing the spread of the virus would be necessary for the resumption of college sports.

Athletic departments will face significant revenue shortfalls without the money generated by college football. If a spring season could help recoup some of those losses, that would be advantageous to these schools.

Because of the contractual agreements between schools and their conferences, this would be unlikely. CBS Sports reported that a conference’s television contracts could prevent a team from leaving its league for a year because those agreements tie a school’s broadcast rights to its conference.

When the Big Ten appeared to be heading toward postponement, Nebraska Coach Scott Frost said: “Our university is committed to playing no matter what, no matter what that looks like and how that looks. We want to play no matter who it is or where it is. So we’ll see how all those chips fall. We certainly hope it’s in the Big Ten. If it isn’t, I think we’re prepared to look for other options.”

In a joint statement Tuesday, Nebraska Athletic Director Bill Moos and Frost said: “We are very disappointed in the decision by the Big Ten Conference to postpone the fall football season, as we have been and continue to be ready to play.”

In an interview on the Big Ten Network, Commissioner Kevin Warren was asked whether it would be possible for a member of the conference to play elsewhere this fall. Warren would not directly answer that question and said the comments from coaches came as a result of emotion and passion. Warren later told Yahoo Sports that Nebraska could not join another league for the season and remain in the Big Ten.

“We have 14 institutions in the Big Ten Conference,” Warren said on BTN. “We’ve been together. I plan for us to continually be together and work collectively to make sure that we’re doing everything that we possibly can to make sure that we keep our conference very strong academically and also very strong athletically.”

Athletes typically have five years to use four seasons of eligibility. The NCAA has not offered guidance about how a lost season would affect a player’s eligibility. The NCAA grants waivers for athletes who need six years to play four seasons because of injuries, and the association could grant a blanket waiver for athletes impacted by the cancellation of fall sports.

If the season cannot be played in the spring, the NCAA would need to adjust scholarship limits for at least next year. Schools already have classes of athletes recruited to join the program on scholarship next year, and those offers are made with the assumption that a certain number of players would have exhausted their eligibility this season.

“The [NCAA and Big Ten] need to SWIFTLY answer important questions about eligibility/scholarship numbers/recruiting,” Matty Dudek, the director of recruiting at Michigan, wrote on Twitter. “Let’s avoid hurting these young men any further and have transparent communication. There’s a lot of incredible off field staff in the B10, we’d be happy to discuss/help!”

The NCAA faced a similar issue in the spring when the coronavirus cut short the seasons of spring-sport athletes. The Division I Council voted to grant all those athletes an additional year of eligibility, but schools would self-apply the waiver, meaning the institutions get to choose who receives extra eligibility. Some schools choose not to apply the waiver, usually citing financial concerns.

The questions about eligibility remain one of the most significant concerns for athletes and coaches.

No. The NCAA Board of Governors said last week that schools cannot require athletes to sign liability waivers related to athletics participation during the coronavirus pandemic. At a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, NCAA President Mark Emmert said he is “categorically opposed” to schools having athletes sign these waivers.

Upon returning to campus, some schools had athletes sign pledges that said they would adhere to health and safety protocols, such as wearing masks.

Some players have expressed concerns about playing this season and the long-term effects of the coronavirus. More than 30 Power Five players have already opted out of playing this season, including at least 13 from the Big Ten.

But in the days leading up to the Big Ten and Pac 12′s decisions, numerous athletes, coaches and politicians publicly pushed for a fall football season. Power Five players banned together and shared a social media message featuring the hashtag #WeWantToPlay. President Trump tweeted his support for a season and wrote: “The student-athletes have been working too hard for their season to be canceled. #WeWantToPlay.”

The Pac-12′s decision to postpone the season was unanimous. When Warren was asked whether the vote of the Big Ten’s presidents was unanimous, he would not say.

“Our schools, we don’t always agree,” Warren said. “But I think people understand — and I take that from a passion standpoint — that we will be together in the Big Ten.

The Pac-12 is the only conference that made a decision that affected winter sports, such as men’s and women’s basketball. Pac-12 schools will not compete in sports until at least the start of 2021. The basketball season typically begins in November.

The other conferences said they would make a decision regarding winter sports at a later date. However, if a conference has already decided that it is unsafe to hold a football game or a cross-country meet in November, that thought process could carry over to how it handles winter sports.

Some professional leagues in the United States have returned to play successfully by housing their players and competing inside a bubble — a controlled, insular environment that keeps teams away from the public. Major League Baseball’s model, in which players are not strictly isolated and teams travel to other cities for away games, is similar to how college football would operate this fall. Multiple MLB teams have dealt with coronavirus outbreaks.

A bubble setup is not feasible in college football, conference and university leaders have said throughout the summer. The cost would be significant. But even if Power Five conferences were willing to devote the resources needed to hold a season, isolating players from the university’s general population would run counter to the NCAA’s long-standing view that college athletes should be part of the campus’s academic and social community. A bubble would essentially force the NCAA to admit that college athletes are different from other students, which could contribute to the erosion of the college model anchored by amateurism.