Saturday’s American Athletic Conference opener between the USF Bulls and the UConn Huskies has been canceled due to Hurricane Irma, both schools announced Thursday evening.
The game was set to be played on Saturday, Sept. 9 at 10:30am ET after being moved up an hour and a half from its noon start.
“As I noted in my comments yesterday, the safety and well-being of our students, staff and coaches is our paramount concern,” said USF Director of Athletics Mark Harlan. “Several large areas of the state are under evacuation orders, including portions of the Tampa Bay area. After consultation with university leadership and outside agencies, I believe it is not appropriate for our team to travel at this time.”
“I want to extend our gratitude to the University of Connecticut and the American Athletic Conference for their compassion and understanding. Our thoughts are with all of those impacted by the hurricane.”
It is not known if the game will be played later this season or not as USF and UConn do not share a common off week. USF indicated that the game “will not be played this week,” while UConn stated the game “will not be played as scheduled.”
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Somehow UCF can play a home game Friday night, but USF can’t manage a game in sunny CT? That’s “bull!”
It’s the travel back that is the issue.
This is a conference game. It needs to be played or USF should not be eligible for the American Championship
So they should be penalized beause a powerful hurricane, is about to come thourgh our state? Not really anyones fault. Its a part of life. I feel like the season should always be 14 weeks so every team has 2 byes! There is no guarantee that it would be easier to make up, but would help. The only way these conference games will be made up is a lot of moving dates around and canceling non conference games.
If UConn-USF and UCF-Memphis were both moved for Nov. 11, then only UCF-UConn would need to be rescheduled.