Boston College’s men’s basketball game at Wake Forest, originally scheduled for Wednesday, December 22 at 6 PM, has been canceled, according to a release from BCEagles.com.
The game was canceled due to Boston College team personnel (it is unspecified as to who) being in COVID-19 protocol. Under the ACC’s pre-established COVID guidelines, this means BC is forced to forfeit the game, resulting in a league loss.
This “drops” BC to 6-6 (1-1) ACC while Wake “improves” to 12-1 (2-0 ACC).
While this result is ostensibly fair given that these protocols were agreed to in advance, I think it’s probably time for the ACC to revisit these protocols, given some changing facts from when they were first established:
-unlike last year, when teams could and were expected to take reasonable precautions to avoid COVID via social distancing, that is not really possible in today’s much more open world - meaning that players catching COVID is not really a result of a failing on their part or lack of responsibility, but rather, a sort of inevitable result of existing in a society where there is a lot of COVID
-in general, you can see that lots of teams (and places in general) are dealing with rising case rates, meaning entire seasons could be upended by forfeits.