Lincoln Riley not backing down in his concern for players returning too soon
By Chip Rouse
In the next two weeks, many college teams will begin allowing players to return to campus on a voluntary basis. OU’s Lincoln Riley remains firm on a July 1 return date for Sooner players.
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In a Zoom conference call with reporters on Wednesday, the Oklahoma head coach reiterated his concern about rushing things and having players return to football activities at their respective schools earlier than is actually necessary.
He also voiced a concern that some coaches will do everything they can to make up for the time lost from having to scudder spring practice because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Sadly, in our college game, voluntary has always been a very loose term,” Riley said in an article posted on ESPN.com by college football reporter Heather Dinich.
“The reality of the situation is there’s different institutions and there’s different conferences that allow you to do a different amount (of activity), or some just look the other way,” he said.
Even though voluntary workouts are totally up to the player and are not to be attended or directed in any way by coaches, Riley said that is a rule that is adhered to very differently in different places and in different parts of the country.
The fact that some coaches like to push the envelope and go beyond the voluntary rules in order to gain a competitive advantage is nothing new in college football, Riley says. It’s just “something we live with.”
On OU waiting to bring its players back later than everyone else, Riley said, “The thing I’m proud of is we didn’t wait for someone to tell us what we could do. We just did simply what we thought was best.”
Riley said they are still gathering information regarding the health and safety of the players, coaches and support personnel, recognizing that the coronavirus is still very much with us and hasn’t gone away.
The plan is to have an initial quarantine period before the players set foot on campus, Riley said. After the initial quarantine is complete, any player that tests positive for the coronavirus will be quarantined away from the team in a specially designated location. Additional testing will go on continuously while the players are going trough voluntary workouts.