Ivy League Cancels Winter Sports Including 2020-21 Basketball Season Due to COVID-19

The Ivy League was the first conference to cancel its conference basketball tournaments back in March. A few months later, it's now it's the first to cancel the following baseball season.

The Ivy League will not participate in any winter sports for the 2020-21 season, including men and women's basketball, according to CBS Sports.

The Ivy League presidents came to their decision in the past 72 hours, one source said, and spent Wednesday and Thursday preparing how to explain their decision to the hundreds of student-athletes and dozens of coaches whose seasons have now been eliminated. The Ivy League's decision comes 13 days before the scheduled start of the 2020-21 college basketball season, though the Ivy League decided this past summer not to allow any of its scholarship sports to play prior to the end of the winter semester.

This is not a shocking vote -- far from it. Multiple Ivy League sources, dating back to early September, expressed pessimism about the notion that league presidents would allow for winter sports/a basketball season. Some programs have yet to even hold indoor workouts to this point. Added one source, "We don't need money to play. In the Ivy League, it's 100% a health and safety issue."

The Ivy League was also the first conference to cancel all its fall sports, including football, earlier this year. Other conferences soon followed suit. Though every FBS conference reversed course on that decision with regards to football, many leagues – including the Big Ten – stuck with the decision to postpone all other fall sports.