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One day after it was announced Boston College men’s basketball would be forced to forfeit their game at Wake Forest due to COVID issues within the team, commonsense prevailed and the ACC voted to eliminate the COVID forfeit rule. They also made the application of this retroactive, so BC’s “loss” to Wake is off the books. The Eagles are once again undefeated in ACC play!
Breaking: The ACC ADs just voted to rescind the league's forfeit rule, a source tells @CBSSports, effecitve immediately.
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) December 22, 2021
The league will also move to the “seven-and-one” rule, meaning a team will have to play if it has seven players and one coach available.
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips confirms to CBS Sports that Wake Forest's forfeit win vs. BC (which is on pause) is now taken off the books.
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) December 22, 2021
Teams will now play moving forward as long as they have 7 players and 1 coach available, so we’ll see how long it takes for that rule to come in to play, if at all.
It’s good to see the ACC evolve its guidelines as the situation evolves. Having teams in COVID protocols forfeit made sense last year when a precondition of being allowed to attempt a sports season was teams avoiding activities that came with COVID risk, as in the pre-vaccine world, this made a lot of sense; teams that followed the strict protocols were able to get their seasons in despite the challenges.
Now, in a much more open world and with vaccines available, this rule was needlessly punitive, and with a large COVID wave incoming, was likely to wreak havoc on teams’ records.
Good work all around by the ACC rectifying this quickly and also making it retroactive to make sure BC wasn’t the only team stiffed before the rule got changed.
BC men’s basketball is scheduled to return to action next week, December 29, at home against Florida State.