UNLV football will begin an eight-game Mountain West season Oct. 24, the league announced tonight.
The conference had previously elected to move its season to the spring out of COVID-19 safety concerns. However, with some leagues starting their season at the end of August, others — including the Mountain West — re-examined their timelines.
Mountain West teams will play eight league games, all against conference opponents. The league championship game is Dec. 19.
The league said games would be subject to approval from city and state officials. With Nevada gatherings capped at 50 attendees, UNLV home games at Allegiant Stadium likely won’t include fans.
The league said it would announce more details Friday. That could include the schedule.
That means sooner than later — maybe as soon as this weekend — UNLV will hit the practice field under first-year coach Marcus Arroyo.
A major college football season that six weeks ago seemed to be in peril, slowly crumbling away, is reforming and has a chance to be almost whole by November. The Big Ten reversed course last week, with kickoff scheduled for the weekend of Oct. 24. Today, the Pac-12 Conference reversed course. Three hours later, after a meeting with university presidents, it was the Mountain West.
The Southeastern Conference begins play this weekend, joining the Big 12, Atlantic Coast Conference and three others that have been up and running since Labor Day weekend.
The season is ongoing but it has been anything but normal. There have been 21 games postponed or canceled since Aug. 26 because of teams battling various levels of COVID-19-related issues.
This week, four games scheduled to be played Saturday have been called off, including Notre Dame at Wake Forest because of a virus outbreak among Fighting Irish players.
The turning point for the return of sports in the Pac-12 came Sept. 3 when it entered an agreement with diagnostic testing company Quidel that will give each school the capacity to conduct daily antigen tests on their athletes. The Mountain West is expected to also give antigen tests, ESPN reported.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.