When Western Michigan football coach Tim Lester looked at his phone at 10:29 a.m. ET on Saturday, Aug. 8, he saw a text message from athletic director Kathy Beauregard calling for an emergency meeting for all fall head coaches at WMU.
But Lester already knew what was going on, as he saw the news on Twitter earlier that morning that the Mid-American Conference would be postponing its fall football season due to COVID-19 concerns, becoming the first Football Subdivision Conference to make that call.
Shortly after that meeting, MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher made it official in a press conference that the MAC was postponing all fall athletic competition with the intention of playing in the spring.