The Portland State Vikings have, at the 11th hour, decided to back out of the Big Sky Conference spring football schedule because of safety concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic.

In a move announced Friday morning, Portland State said it would not take part in a delayed six-game conference season and will instead consider playing a modified two-game schedule in April. Montana and Montana State joined the Vikings in the decision, which, among other things, ensures the trio will not be eligible for the Big Sky championship and FCS playoffs.

The development comes days after Portland State players reported to Stott Center on campus for preseason COVID-19 testing and roughly six weeks before a season-opening matchup against Eastern Washington.

“With the uncertainty of the football season, we have determined this is the best course of action for our program this spring,” Portland State athletic director Valerie Cleary said in a release.

Earlier this week, as players were going through a two-day wave of coronavirus testing in preparation for the season, Cleary said the Vikings were on track to play Feb. 27 against Eastern Washington at Hillsboro Stadium. But she also couched her optimism with the reality that pandemic plans “can change at any time,” noting that the university would put the health and safety of its student-athletes ahead of everything else.

At the same time, coach Bruce Barnum admitted he was “anxious” about the looming season and the health and safety of his players on multiple levels. For starters, coronavirus cases and deaths are soaring nationwide, including in Oregon, so keeping a team that mostly lives off-campus virus-free will be tricky. What’s more, Barnum and Portland State administrators are also concerned about the physical well-being of their players from a football standpoint.

The Vikings have not participated in organized football workouts in 10 months, while some Big Sky programs in states with more lax coronavirus restrictions have been practicing and/or holding group workouts for weeks.

“We have been out of competition and practice for nearly a year and to get our team ready by a scheduled Feb. 27 game doesn’t make sense,” Barnum said in a release. “Playing potential games in April and preparing for the 2021 season makes more sense for the safety of our team.”

This reality no doubt weighed on university presidents at Portland State, Montana and Montana State, when they met Wednesday with other conference presidents to contemplate the spring season. Within 48 hours, they decided it wasn’t safe to move forward.

The trio of schools joins Sacramento State, which announced in the fall it would opt out of the Big Sky spring season altogether, in altering football plans amid the pandemic.

The Vikings will begin a football conditioning program next week and, depending on the results of medical evaluations, ease into practice two or three weeks later. They would then play up to two games in April against to-be-determined opponents.

If nothing else, the modified and condensed spring season will get the Vikings ready for the next real season in the fall, which begins Sept. 4 at the University of Hawaii. That, Barnum says, is most important.

“In the back of my mind, I’m looking at 2021 and next season,” Barnum told The Oregonian/OregonLive earlier in the week. “We have to be ready for that, and we have to kind of make sure this spring prepares us for 2021. No matter what we do — whether we play six games, one game or no games — we have to be ready to go to Hawaii and Washington State later in the year.”