How college football is being affected by the coronavirus

Concerns about the coronavirus are affecting professional sports, college basketball and now college football is adjusting with precautions in place for spring practice.

While the NCAA waits to determine what they’ll do about March Madness amid the concerns about the coronavirus, now colleges are faced with what they’ll do about spring football.

Concerns over the coronavirus have led to restricted media access for most of the ongoing conference tournaments while the Ivy League decided to cancel the men’s and women’s tournaments outright. MLB, NHL, NBA and the MLS have taken measures to protect themselves and others from the virus by restricting media access and limiting things to essential personnel only.

While the NCAA waits to determine if March Madness will go on as planned, go on with restricted media access, go on with zero fans in the stands, postponed our canceled entirely, the NCAA may also have to contend with what to do about spring practices.

Spring football practices have been underway for several schools for a couple of weeks already, but some, like USC, is just getting underway today.

USC has mandated all classes be online while the home athletic events have coronavirus precautions in place with attendance limited to the team, coaches, essential personnel, families of the players, media and recruits.

Precautions such as this are taking place across the country where Cincinnati has canceled the spring game and more are following. Michigan has canceled its spring game that was scheduled for on April 18 and is imposing travel restrictions when it comes to recruiting through April 21. Coaches can’t conduct off-campus recruiting activities and can’t host recruits on official or unofficial visits.

The spring evaluation period begins on April 15 so Michigan will be getting a late start. But not necessarily a start behind other schools.

Expect more schools to cancel the spring game and delay the normal spring evaluation period before making a bigger push during the summer camp season. Ultimately, a decision from the conference may come into play if spring recruiting is canceled this year, according to Bruce Feldman.

Virginia Tech’s spring game is in limbo after the school canceled all school-sponsored events, albeit with athletic events the exception for now, according to The Athletic’s Andy Bittner.

With several universities canceling classes or moving to online-only classes, the expectation is more spring practices will be closed to the media and/or public and spring games could be canceled or played in empty stadiums. That’s the move the NCAA made for the Men’s and Women’s NCAA Tournament where March Madness will go fanless.

More information will be revealed on a school-by-school basis but fans who were planning on attending their team’s spring game in April may want to prepare for the game not to take place, and if it does, there’s a chance it may go on with them having to watch on TV.

The novel coronavirus and COVID-19, the disease it causes, first emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The virus spreads similarly to influenza, with sneezing and coughing as the primary vectors of infection. To date, more than 90,000 cases have been confirmed in more than 70 countries worldwide, including the United States. The World Health Organization declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on Jan. 30 and countries have implemented curfews, travel bans and mandatory quarantines to help prevent its spread.

For more information about COVID-19, visit the CDC’s website or the website for your state’s Department of Health.

For more NCAA football news, analysis, opinion and unique coverage by FanSided, including Heisman Trophy and College Football Playoff rankings, be sure to bookmark these pages.