Forfeits and Beer: Pac-12, UW Push Football Mandates

An Oregon-week virus outbreak for the Huskies brought a game cancellation last year; it's a loss if it happens now.

Dan Raley | Aug 12, 2021

Forfeits and Beer: Pac-12, UW Push Football Mandates /

On a Tuesday in December, the University of Washington football team was preparing for a game at Oregon. The Huskies never made it to Eugene or anywhere else thereafter.

A COVID-19 outbreak made every UW offensive linemen unavailable and effectively scuttled the season.

As for playing the Ducks, the game simply was canceled.

If the virus rears its ugly head again in this manner and disrupts the roster, the Huskies now will be on the wrong end of a forfeiture, following a Pac-12 decision announced on Thursday to return to the conference's previous protocol.

Can't play, you get a conference loss.

"In accordance with that rule, if an institution is unable to play a contest through its own fault, it shall forfeit such contest to its opponent," the conference warned ominously.

That's the bad news. The good news is 95 percent of the UW players voluntarily have been vaccinated, with that number becoming 100 percent once classes begin in late September when the school mandates vaccinations for all student, greatly lessening the chances of not playing football.

"We're up to 95-something percent vaccinations among our players, which is awesome and phenomenal," Husky coach Jimmy Lake said. "Yet everybody's heard there's these different variants running around the world now. We're not completely through COVID. There's still going to be restrictions. We still have to be smart."

Meantime, the UW athletic department this week announced that beer and wine will be sold this football season throughout Husky Stadium for the first time. The UW previously provided these beverages in premium seating areas and designated beer gardens, but not to all fans.

The UW, however, is not loosening its restrictions on fans bringing their own alcohol to the football games, continuing with its clear-bag policy.

"We have consistently heard feedback from our fans that this amenity would benefit the fan experience on game day," UW athletic director Jen Cohen said of the extended sales.

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Published Aug 12, 2021

DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.