What has been a spring football season wrought with pandemic-related interruptions in the MEAC has only gotten worse after the conference announced Wednesday that the remaining football-playing schools will not be eligible to participate in the FCS postseason.
“The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference has informed the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision that it will not meet the criteria to maintain its automatic qualifier because the three programs, Howard, Delaware State, and South Carolina State, playing this spring will not play each other as required by the NCAA (and) FCS, the league said in a statement.”
Howard and South Carolina State will not play each other this spring due to the District of Columbia’s restrictions on travel to and from the state of South Carolina, which has an elevated COVID-19 case count.
Current D.C. COVID-19 travel restrictions apply to anyone coming into the area from a jurisdiction with more than 10 cases per 100,000 people.
Also read: Pandemic-related travel restrictions end Howard-South Carolina State season series
The cancelation of that matchup, originally scheduled for Saturday, prevented the three teams from playing each other, as required to be eligible for the FCS playoffs.
The MEAC suspended its spring 2021 football season on Feb. 11 after six of the league’s nine programs opted out. Conference policy states that if 50 percent or more schools are unable to participate in any championship, the championship for that sport will be suspended.
During the truncated spring season, Howard, South Carolina State and Delaware State have played a combined eight games in total.
