The college football season appears to be in disarray after a 15th Division I game, scheduled for this Saturday, was called off due to Covid-19.
The game between Utah at UCLA is the latest to be canceled. The Pac-12 Conference made the announcement Friday, citing Utah’s football program not having the minimum amount of scholarship players available due to positive Covid-19 tests and additional student-athletes placed in isolation under contact tracing protocols.
“Our community is especially hard-hit right now by this virus, and our team and our department have been doing everything possible to follow protocols and avoid the spread of the virus,” Utah Director of Athletics Mark Harlan said in a statement, “We were doing very well, day-by-day, and it is extremely difficult for our student-athletes and coaches that they will not be able to compete again this week.”
According to NCAA.com, 15 of the 49 football games that were scheduled to kick off Saturday were either postponed or canceled due to Covid-19 issues.
The announcement came just one day after the Southeastern Conference postponed multiple football games – with seven originally scheduled and only three still set to play – all because of Covid-19.
The number of Covid-19 cases is rising in almost every state, with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicting there will be 260,000 to 282,000 coronavirus deaths by December 5, according to a forecast published Thursday.
There are currently at least 10.5 million cases of coronavirus in the US and more than 242,000 have already died, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
CNN’s Amir Vera, Holly Yan and Christina Maxouris contributed to this report.
