MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - West Virginia University's football game this Saturday at NC State has been canceled because of Hurricane Florence, a Category 4 storm inching closer toward a direct hit on the North Carolina coast later this week.
 
The Wolfpack made the announcement earlier today.
 
"Obviously, these decisions are not easy decisions to be made," West Virginia director of athletics Shane Lyons said Tuesday afternoon. "There is a lot of input from a lot of different people. We were waiting to make this decision for as long as we could, and it came today as we were talking to NC State and meeting with their officials about their emergency response teams.
 
"I think first and foremost is the safety and well-being of our student-athletes going to that situation, and of equal importance, is the safety and the well-being of the citizens of North Carolina and what they are going to be facing in the next four or five days," Lyons continued. "It was important to be able to release hotel rooms that fans had to give those evacuating the coastal areas the opportunity to come inland."
 
Lyons said weather reports they received indicated the storm is intensifying and moving directly toward the North Carolina coast.
 
Based on conflicting open-week dates, rescheduling the game is going to be nearly impossible. NC State's open week is Oct. 13, the week West Virginia is scheduled to play Iowa State, and WVU's open week is Oct. 20, five days before the Mountaineers' Thursday night Big 12 home game against Baylor.
 
Rescheduling the game on Saturday, Oct. 20 is not viable, according to Lyons.
 
"I will not be scheduling a game during our bye week," he explained. "Anybody who understands football knows I'm not going to play a game on Saturday and then turn around and play a game on Thursday night. That's not an option for me, especially when our opponent has a week-and-a-half to prepare."
 
Lyons said other options later in the season such as Saturday, Dec. 1, or the following week are not practical either.
 
"As for Dec. 1, I plan on being in Dallas (for the Big 12 Championship game)," he said. Scheduling the game a week afterward is pointless because bowl games have already been determined.
 
"Why are you playing the game just to play it?" Lyons said.
 
Having NC State come to Morgantown to play instead of Raleigh is also impractical nor is playing at a neutral-site venue.
 
"You are trying to sell 60,000 tickets (in a week's time). You don't have food for the concession areas, you don't have the emergency response people on the books, and it's a lot more difficult than it sounds to make it happen logistically," Lyons said, adding flip-flopping next year's home date with NC State to this year is not viable because it would leave WVU with one fewer home game next season.
 
Therefore, it appears this will be the first canceled game for West Virginia that I can recall since 1954, when Washington and Lee dropped its football program during the summertime and WVU didn't have enough time to schedule a replacement game.
 
Since then, there have been a handful of games that have been postponed and made up at later dates. West Virginia's home game against Davidson originally scheduled on Saturday, Nov. 23, was delayed for five days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Friday, Nov. 22, in Dallas, Texas.
 
In 2001, the terrorist attacks in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., forced the postponement of West Virginia's game at Maryland on Saturday, Sept. 15. 
 
It was eventually made up two weeks later on Saturday, Sept. 29.
 
And, four years later, West Virginia's late-October game against USF at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa was postponed until the end of the season because of Hurricane Wilma.
 
Before 1954, there were other WVU football games canceled such as during World War II, in 1918 when World War I and a worldwide influenza outbreak forced the cancellation of the entire season and in 1910, when the final three games that year were eliminated following the death of WVU player Rudolph Munk during a Nov. 12 game played against Bethany in Wheeling.
 
Lyons said having one fewer game shouldn't have a negative impact on West Virginia's resume, should it be in contention for a College Football Playoff spot at the end of the season.
 
"Our resume will speak for itself," he declared. "If we were to win the Big 12 championship (and run the table in the Big 12) we would have 11 wins against Power 5 institutions and one game against an FCS institution. Anybody else under consideration, I don't think will have that type of resume with us not playing this game."