Frontier announces spring football season

The Frontier Conference has begun rolling out dates for the postponed 2020 season, which will actually be played in 2021.

Wednesday, the league announced via a press release, the schedule for the spring football season, which will actually be the delayed 2020 season, due to COVID-19.

There will be a seven-week Frontier schedule this spring, which is actually slated to kick off Feb. 27, the Frontier's Council of Presidents approved Wednesday night.

For the Montana State University-Northern Lights, that means the new season will begin Feb. 27 at defending Frontier Conference champion College of Idaho. Had the league went ahead with a fall schedule, Northern wouldn't have played the Yotes, as they, Southern and Eastern Oregon all moved football to the spring all the way back last summer. The decision to cancel the fall season, which came in August, meant all Frontier teams would be playing again in the spring.

However, spring is a relative term, and what it really means is, the season is played in the spring semester. February and March are still very much winter in most of Montana, so, Northern's schedule lends itself to that. The Lights also travel to Montana Tech March 6, before finally playing their first game in the new Lights Stadium, and on Mike Tilleman Field, March 13. That game will be against the Southern Oregon Raiders.

In the seven-week season, the Lights will also host Carroll College March 20, travel to Eastern Oregon March 27, visit Montana Western April 3 and wrap up the season at home against Rocky Mountain College April 10.

The NAIA playoffs are set to begin the following week.