In an announcement Friday afternoon, the Pac-12 CEO Group announced it will be canceling all non-conference games in football, men's and women's soccer and women's volleyball for the 2020 season.
Along with the elimination of out of conference matchups, the Pac-12 also announced that mandatory athletic activities have been delayed "until a series of health and safety indicators, which have recently trended in a negative direction, provided sufficient positive data to enable a move to a second phase of return-to-play activities."
"The CEO Group made clear that it hopes to play football and all other fall sports provided that it can meet the health and safety needs of its student-athletes and obtain appropriate permissions from state and local health authorities," the release said.
For ASU football, the loss of non-conference play means the team's scheduled matchups against NAU, University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Brigham Young University will no longer take place.
Although there hasn't been an official schedule released for 2020, ASU soccer played nine non-conference games in 2019. ASU volleyball participated in 11 non-conference games in 2019 and has yet to release an official 2020 schedule.
Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said in the statement that the health and safety of student-athletes was the "number one priority."
“Our decisions have and will be guided by science and data, and based upon the trends and indicators over the past days, it has become clear that we need to provide ourselves with maximum flexibility to schedule, and to delay any movement to the next phase of return-to-play activities," Scott wrote.
Student-athletes who choose not to participate in athletics due to COVID-19 related concerns will continue to have their scholarships honored by their university, the release said.
Details on conference-only schedules will be announced no later than July 31, the release said.
The Pac-12 joined the only other Power-5 conference, the Big Ten conference, to announce their plans for the upcoming fall season. On Thursday, the Big Ten announced non-conference games would not be played during the 2020-21 fall sports season.
Reach the reporters at ancoil@asu.edu and kbriley@asu.edu and follow @anc2018 and @KokiRiley on Twitter.
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