Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley said on Friday that he is still optimistic college football will kickoff on time in the fall but all options need to remain on the table at this point.
In a Zoom call with reporters, including ESPN staff writer Dave Wilson, Riley said everyone wants college football in the normal fall months, “but it would be very wrong of us to take any potential option off the table right now,” especially with coronavirus cases surging currently in Oklahoma and across the southern portion of the U.S.
Oklahoma welcomed back players July 1. A couple of days prior to that, however, 14 Sooner players tested positive for the coronavirus along with two staff members.
This was not particularly a surprise for the Sooner head coach. He said he knew there would be some players who would test positive before the start of voluntary workouts this week.
“We’re kind of a microcosm of the entire country right now,” Riley said. For right now, his focus is on keeping the players safe, he said, and trying to figure out the next phase of the workout schedule.
“At some point you have to practice football,” he said, “and it tough to do that without having two players close to one another.”
With most medical experts predicting that COVID-19 cases will continue through the fall months and that we could see cases spike again as the temperature cools in the late fall. The one thing all of the medical and public health officials agree on is that this virus is not going away anytime soon, and until there is an effective vaccine available, the health risks will remain high and somewhat unpredictable.
While Riley and others in college football are holding on to their optimistic view that there will be college football this fall, with coronavirus cases continuing to grow in many locations, now a good four months into the U.S. portion of the pandemic, the real possibility exists that the season could be delayed, if not experience scheduling disruptions.
That is why Riley believes spring football needs to remain an option. “I think it’d be very difficult to say the spring is not a potential option,” he said. “I, for one, think it’s very doable.”
Riley said that if everything were pushed back to the spring, it would probably necessitate a shortened schedule, perhaps a conference-only schedule followed by an abbreviated postseason.
There are many moving parts, for sure, and it’s going to require every school to keep its head up and closely monitor what’s going on not only within its own walls but in the surrounding community. Taking one step at a time instead of giant leaps and unnecessary risks is the only way we’re going to be able to get through this most unusual time and salvage all, or even a part of, the 2020 college football season.