Coronavirus Cancels Cougars and Cardinal College Football Contest

No-contest.

That's the ruling by the Pac-12 Conference this afternoon regarding the Washington State Cougars vs. the Stanford Cardinal football game that was scheduled for tomorrow afternoon in Palo Alto, California.

One day after the Cougars learned starting QB Jayden de Laura had contracted coronavirus, Washington State fell below the 53-man scholarship requirement, and thus could not field a proper squad, so the game was declared a no-contest.

The Pac-12 said in a statement, "This decision was made under the Pac-12's football game cancellation policy due to Washington State not having the minimum number of scholarship players available for the game as a result of a number of positive football student-athlete COVID-19 cases and resulting isolation of additional football student-athletes under contact tracing protocols."

In a statement after the announcement, Washington State director of athletics Pat Chun said everyone in the program "are saddened for not only our student-athletes, coaches and staff, but those within the Stanford program, who have worked so hard preparing for this weekend."

“I’m disappointed for our team and our players,” first-year WSU coach Nick Rolovich said in a statement Friday. “They have battled through so much this year. We had a good week of practice and were excited to play this game. I recognize the pain they feel with his lost opportunity but this 2020 football team is a resilient group of young men.”

Starting QB de Laura is out for the next two weeks, and that includes the Apple Cup contest which is scheduled for a week from today, (Friday, November 27th) in Pullman. There is pending doom across multiple sports platforms that the annual cross-state rivalry game might not even be contested at all.

Stanford explored other options to play a game this weekend, but determined none was feasible, the school said in a statement.