Frontier moves football to spring; opportunity for EOU to play conference foes reinstated
Published 7:00 am Saturday, August 22, 2020
- Eastern Oregon University’s defense celebrates following a stop in a 2019 game against MSU-Northern. The Frontier Conference announced its updated 2020 schedule, which has been altered due to COVID-19. The Mountaineers will open and close the 2020 campaign against in-state rival Southern Oregon.
LA GRANDE — The Eastern Oregon University football team looks like it will be playing its Frontier Conference opponents in the spring after all.
The conference announced Thursday, Aug. 13, that its Montana-based football teams are moving their schedule from the fall of 2020 to the spring of 2021, citing health concerns and safety surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak as a reason for the decision.
The move also will result in the eight teams that are in the conference for football being able to be reunited in scheduling in the spring.
EOU, College of Idaho and Southern Oregon University, all of which compete in the Cascade Collegiate Conference in their other sports, had made the decision to move all of their fall sports to the spring — including football — regardless of what the FC did. The NAIA also has announced it was moving all of its fall championships to the spring of 2021.
In spite of that, up until last week’s announcement the Frontier Conference was set to move forward with an eight-game round robin fall schedule among the other five schools, all of which are in Montana — Carroll College, Rocky Mountain College, MSU-Northern, Montana Western and Montana Tech.
In a press release, the conference said the announcement would allow for all eight teams to take part in the Frontier schedule in the spring. Prior to the move, EOU, C of I and SOU were making preparations to play an independent schedule for football in 2021.
Eastern is coming off a 4-7 campaign in 2019 and was 4-6 in Frontier play.
