NCAA Division I offers blanket waiver to start football early

The NCAA Division I Committee for Legislative Relief issued a blanket waiver on July 28 in order to provide temporary scheduling relief to Division I football schools amid the COVID-19 crisis.

This blanket waiver allows FBS and FCS football schools to open up the 2020 season during “week zero” on Aug. 29. Typically, each individual school has to request a waiver for the committee to schedule a “week zero” game but the NCAA said that it had received enough waiver requests from schools that it decided to issue the blanket waiver to help give schools more flexibility in trying to reschedule games this season.

This waiver will be good for the 2020 season and schools will still be allowed a maximum of 12 games in FBS and 11 games in FCS.

The waiver comes after the PAC-12, Big 10 and other various FCS conferences announced that they would either play conference only games in 2020 or move to the spring, leaving holes in schedules all across the country. With more scheduling shakeups likely to happen, this waiver gives schools more options in how to fill those holes.

It also provides some new obstacles for conferences like the Sun Belt who previously announced that it was pushing back the start of all fall competition until Sept. 3. The Troy football team’s season opener was scheduled for Sept. 5 against Arkansas-Pine Bluff, but that game was cancelled when the SWAC pushed football season back until the fall.

This new waiver would give Troy the opportunity to schedule a game on Aug. 29, which could certainly come in handy since the Trojans lost another non-conference game from its schedule, but the Sun Belt’s decision to push fall sports back puts a road block in the way of that possibility.