Dutchmen Fire the Cannons on 2020 Fall Season

The 2019 Liberty League champions, the Union College Dutchmen, won't be defending their LL crown this fall according to an announcement released today at noon ET that they are cancelling fall sports competition. What stands out is the fact that Union does plan to reopen their campus to all students, but still won't allow sports.

This unfortunate news shoots another hole into the Hobart College Football schedule, eliminating the Week 5 conference opener that was scheduled to be in Geneva on October 3rd. This was going to be the game of the season in my opinion - a rematch of last year's 23-7 loss where the Statesmen basically gave the game away thanks to three INTs, including a 54-yd pick six. This will be the first time since the 1981 season this rivalry game won't be played. The Statesmen are 49-52-2 all time against Union.

This also drops the LL to having only four conference games. Obviously the Statesmen can get over the five game minimum NCAA playoff qualifier / requirement given the two OOC games the LL said would happen, but this change could, if not should, necessitate them expanding that to three OOC games.

Given the significant  geographic / regional overlap between the LL and Empire 8 conferences, I think that would be feasible. As I've previously discussed, Hobart could fill a few of the cancelled OOC games from Weeks 1-3 in October. With openings now on the 3rd, 10th and 24th, there are a number of possibilities there.

Hartwick has an open date on 10/3, Alfred on 10/10 and the Week 2 SUNY-Morrisville game could be moved to 10/24 when the Mustangs also have an open date.

Unfortunately Union's taking it's ball and staying home this fall....

For now all we can do is continue to speculate on how the 2020 season comes to fruition, or dies on the vine. 

Thanks as always for reading and go 'Bart!

PS - I'll be doing a live twitter interview tonight with a CFB recruiting consultant named Brandan Cahill at 8 PM ET @D3Huddle for anyone who wants to tune in.