FAU Football: Home opener against USF postponed because of COVID-19 issues

This comes after FAU Football head coach Willie Taggart reported no positive cases within the team.

This now tallies five games either canceled or postponed due to coronavirus concerns. Photo by Alex Liscio.

Richard Pereira, Staff Writer
September 23, 2020

FAU Athletics has announced Wednesday that the football program’s first home game of the season against the University of South Florida, which was scheduled for Saturday, has been postponed. Cited was the “issues involving the novel coronavirus” as the reason behind the decision.

“The two schools are working to identify a future date for rescheduling,” FAU Athletics said in their statement.

This is the fifth game to either be postponed or canceled for FAU football with Minnesota, Stony Brook, Old Dominion, Georgia Southern and now USF joining the group. 

Before the game got postponed, USF suspended its practice today awaiting results for COVID-19 testing after their opponent last week, Notre Dame, had seven positive tests and postponed its game this weekend.

During his press conference Wednesday, head coach Willie Taggart confirmed everyone on the team tested negative for COVID-19 after the latest round of testing, including the 11 players who tested positive on Sept. 16.

“We took tests this morning so we’re waiting on those, but the last test we took, they’re all negative,” Taggart said in the press conference.

The players who tested negative today after testing positive on the 16th will have to stay quarantined due to protocol.

Despite these setbacks, Taggart gave credit to the players lower on the depth chart who took advantage of their opportunity to showcase themselves.

“Now they’re getting reps in being developed, which is helping create some depth in the football team; it’s not ideal in what you want, but that’s the positive standpoint and they’ve got valuable reps helping them develop as we’ll see whether that’s gonna pay off for us,” Taggart said.

FAU’s next scheduled game for the season will be against Charlotte on Oct. 3 at 4 p.m. on ESPNU.

Richard Pereira is a staff writer for the University Press. For information regarding this or other stories, email [email protected] or tweet him @Rich26Pereira.