Southern Miss football game vs. FAU called off because of COVID-19 cases
Saturday’s Florida Atlantic-Southern Miss football game has been postponed after FAU determined it had too many players sidelined due to COVID-19 protocols.
USM announced the decision Friday night, saying that Conference USA and the two schools will work together to determine a new date for the game.
The match-up was originally set to kick off at 3 p.m. on Saturday at M.M. Roberts Stadium.
“We understand this COVID-related decision made by Florida Atlantic to not play our game this weekend and appreciate the consistent communication with our athletic department during the week,” USM athletic director Jeremy McClain said in a press release. “We are disappointed for our student-athletes who will not get a chance to participate. However, we will work with Florida Atlantic and Conference USA to reschedule this game for later in the season.”
This marks the first game that USM has had a game called off this season due to the coronavirus.
This Saturday’s contest was originally in some question with Hurricane Delta lingering in the Gulf of Mexico, but that became less of an obstacle after the storm’s projected path moved further to the west and into Southwest Louisiana.
This is far from FAU’s first instance this season of COVID-19 standing in the way of a game. The Owls had their first four contests of the season called off because of issues with the coronavirus.
FAU (1-0, 1-0) opened its season with a 21-17 win over Charlotte last week in Boca Raton.
The Golden Eagles have had their own issues with COVID-19 recently with interim head coach Scotty Walden acknowledging Monday that several players were held out of last week’s 41-31 win over North Texas due to COVID-19 protocols.
“I’m not going to give you a number. I’ve got to be careful with confidentiality and things like that,” Walden said. “With COVID, we had numerous players that were not available for the game. Everybody is battling it. Keep in mind this doesn’t mean everybody is a positive test. You’ve got contact tracing, things of that nature. Our training staff has done an amazing job getting that under control. We (had enough depth) to play the game. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have played.”
Southern Miss (1-3, 1-1 in C-USA) will return to action when they travel to UTEP for a 6:30 p.m. kickoff on Oct. 17 on ESPN2.
This story was originally published October 8, 2020 at 8:03 PM.
