UW-Oregon Game Cancelled; Is Season Over for the Huskies?

The conference announced the Huskies didn't have the minimum number of players needed to face the Ducks.

The Washington-Oregon football game scheduled for Saturday in Eugene, Oregon, was cancelled Thursday, which could very well mean the end to the Huskies' abbreviated and continuously virus-interrupted season.

The university, acknowledging a larger COVID-19 outbreak on its football roster, notified the Pac-12  that Jimmy Lake's team wouldn't have the minimum number of scholarship players available for the game.

The conference declared it a no contest.

This decision means the UW and Oregon won't play for the first in 19 seasons, or since the conference last rotated them off each other's schedules with byes during the Rick Neuheisel era in 2001.

"We are disappointed for our players and fans and for our opponent that our game will not be played this weekend," Lake said in a statement released by the school. "We are doing everything we can to resume football activities as soon as we can safely do so."

This marked the third game cancellation in a bizarre season for the Huskies, who earlier couldn't play their scheduled opener against California in Berkeley on Nov. 7 or the Apple Cup in Washington State in Pullman on Nov. 27 because of virus issues incurred by those opponents.

The Huskies have yet to play a road game this season.

For those automatically assuming this means the UW (3-1) wins the Northern Division by default and will play for the Pac-12 title, think again. Oregon (3-2) is a half game behind the Huskies in the standings. Nothing is certain at this point as the conference decides what to do next.

On his KJR radio show on Wednesday, Lake said if his team couldn't get ready to play Oregon this weekend, there was almost no chance it would be healthy enough to regroup for a game on the following weekend on Dec. 18 or 19, set aside for crossover games and the league championship.

The bowl games are mess right now, too, with three of them with Pac-12 ties canceling out of this postseason, so that's unclear.

The Huskies, who had players absent for last weekend's Stanford game because of the virus, experienced a bigger outbreak this week, forcing cancellation of practice and all team-related activities on Wednesday and Thursday. 

The Pac-12 issued the following statement regarding the UW-Oregon game once the determination was made to shelve it:

“After consultation with Washington, the Pac-12 Conference announced the game involving Washington at Oregon scheduled for Saturday, December 12, has been cancelled. This decision was made under the Pac-12’s football game cancellation policy due to Washington not having the minimum number of scholarship student-athletes available for the game due to a number of positive football student-athlete COVID-19 cases and resulting isolation of additional football student-athletes under contact tracing protocols. Under Conference policy, the game will be declared a no contest.

"Not contesting this game is very disappointing to our student-athletes and our fans. While all of us want to see our student-athletes on the field competing, our number one priority must continue to be the health and safety of all those connected to Pac-12 football programs.”

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