NCAA President rules out D1 fall championships

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Editor's note: The NCAA decision does not apply to FBS football teams like Clemson.

NCAA President Mark Emmert said on Thursday that the NCAA will not hold DI fall championships this year. The announcement affects men's and women's cross country, field hockey, FCS, men's and women's soccer, women's volleyball and men's water polo. Division II and Division III had previously canceled their fall championships. Emmert also said the NCAA is looking into holding fall sports championships in the winter or spring.

"We cannot now, at this point, have fall NCAA championships, because there’s not enough school participating," Emmert said. "The Board of Governors also said, 'Look, if you don’t have half of the schools playing a sport, you can’t have a legitimate championship.' So we can’t in any Division I NCAA championship sport, which is everything other than FBS football, that goes on in the fall. Sadly, tragically, that’s going to be the case this fall, full-stop.

"But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t and can’t turn toward winter and spring and, create a legitimate championship for all those students."

Emmert said he's confident this can be figured out, but that the highest priority is to the winter and spring sports because they lost their championships earlier this year. He also said fall will be used to keep kids healthy, engaged with coaches and focused on academics.

Emmert said they're looking into shrinking bracket sizes, keying in on pre-determined sites and bubble models for sports.

"Is it doable? Yeah," Emmert said. "We want to make it work for the students."

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