Oklahoma football: As COVID-19 cases rise, so do concerns for 2020 season
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma football coach Lincoln Riley remains optimistic there will be a 2020 college football season, be also is open to the realistic possibility it won’t start on time.
Now four months into the COVID-19 pandemic that has changed the course of everyday life in the United States and elsewhere around the world, exposure cases are increasing again in many parts of the country. With coronavirus cases on the rise, so too are health and safety concerns by many associated with college football about the feasibility of getting the season started on time.
We are fast approaching the time when teams will need to kick off organized training and conditioning workouts in order to be ready to begin the season on time.
"“I mean, if you’d asked everybody three weeks or a month ago, everybody probably would have said 100 percent (about the season starting on time),” Riley said in a Zoom call last week with reporters, including John Hoover, who covers the Sooners for Sports Illustrated.“Now these numbers (coronavirus cases) have surged. Things are changing so quickly, and that’s created more doubt in people’s minds, and understandably so,” he said.More from OU FootballOklahoma football: ESPN, USA Today bowl projections after Week 3Oklahoma football: Sooner ‘D’ grading well, but real test begins with Big 12 playTwo Oklahoma football players receive Big 12 weekly honorsOklahoma football: Sooners’ stock rising fast in ESPN prospective rankingsOklahoma football: Sooners leaving opponents in the dust early and often"
Several Power Five conference leaders told Heather Dinich of ESPN earlier this week there are important decisions to be made in the coming weeks, but no one appears to be ready just yet to pull the plug on the college football season starting on time. That time is rapidly approaching, however, with most of the Power Five commissioners suggesting the end of July as a decision target.
Oklahoma football is planning for an on-time season start but keeping its options open.
Based on the six-week return plan approved by the NCAA last month, teams like Oklahoma that begin the season on Labor Day weekend can begin mandatory organized workouts on July 13, followed by an enhanced training schedule that can begin July 24. Normal preseason training camp would start Aug. 7.
Most college head coaches and school administrators have said from the beginning of the pandemic, which cancelled all spring sports activities, including spring practice, that circumstances around the coronavirus would guide future decision making regarding this year’s college football season. And lately those circumstances have not been tracking the way anyone would want them to.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told ESPN’s Dinich that the conference would continue to put one foot in front of the other and take it one day at a time until it is told to stop by local health or government officials.
Because of the way COVID-19 cases are trending over the last 30 days or so, a later season start, as well as contingencies for how to deal with schedule disruptions, is looking like a more realistic scenario than it way even a couple of weeks ago. The idea of a spring football season, which OU’s Riley believes is not only a real possibility but very doable, is beginning to gain some traction.
The one thing we do know right now, Riley said, is “this season is gonna be unlike any other, so we’ve got to prepare our team that way. We’ll have to deal with some things as they come up.”