Four days after taking on the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, the Grambling State football team announced it was pausing all football activities immediately as a result of positive covid-19 screenings.
With the decision, Grambling State (0-3 overall and Southwestern Athletic Conference) has canceled its next two games against Alabama A&M, which was scheduled for Saturday, and Texas Southern on April 3. That leaves the Tigers with one remaining game, April 17 against Southern University in Shreveport.
The positive tests do not impact the Golden Lions (2-0 overall and SWAC), who defeated the Tigers 48-21 last Saturday in Grambling, La. UAPB is scheduled to take on Alabama State (2-1 overall and SWAC) in its first home game of the spring season Saturday at Simmons Bank Field.
Kickoff time has been changed to 4 p.m. The game, which is a battle of two division leaders within the SWAC, can be streamed live on ESPN3.com and the ESPN app.
UAPB Coach Doc Gamble said he was not concerned Grambling's positive tests would affect his team.
"We get tested three times a week," Gamble said. "We've been tested twice already, and we've been good both times."
Another SWAC team, Alcorn State, forfeited its entire spring schedule before the season began because of covid-19 problems. Each team that was scheduled to play Alcorn State receives an automatic victory.
Fall sports in the SWAC including football, women's volleyball and women's soccer are competing during the spring as the NCAA postponed fall championship events as a precaution during the coronavirus pandemic. The UAPB volleyball team is taking on Alcorn State at 4 p.m. today in the first round of the SWAC tournament in Birmingham, Ala.
Major-college football teams, which play in the Football Bowl Subdivision, competed in the fall, but the NCAA does not sanction championships at that level. SWAC teams are members of the Football Championship Subdivision, a lower level of Division I that uses a tournament to determine a national champion (although the SWAC does not send a team to the tournament and holds its own title game).
UAPB is limiting seating to 3,000 fans for Saturday's game, which is less than 20% of Simmons Bank Field's 16,000-seat capacity. The university utilizes a ticketing system that creates a social-distancing bubble around a spectator or group of spectators within the reserved seating area, interim Athletic Director Chris Robinson said. Some general-admission seats will already be marked off.
The Golden Lions will have three more games left following Saturday's contest: April 3 at Mississippi Valley State, April 17 at home against Prairie View A&M and April 24 at home against Texas Southern.