Oklahoma football: Sooners report zero new COVID cases

If you’re looking for some good news in a time and space where the term “positive” is anything but that, the news coming out of the Oklahoma football program this week is like a breath of fresh air.

The Sooners are in their second week of voluntary workouts after starting nearly a month later than many of the other major college programs.

Upon the return of the OU players on July 1, the athletic department reported that out of 111 players and 72 staff members who received COVID testing, 16 (14 players and two staff members) tested positive. Among the players with positive test results upon their arrival on the Norman campus, 12 were active cases and two were in recovery.

The Week 2 testing results, which were released on Thursday, are much more encouraging. Out of eighty-nine Sooner players who were tested this week, not one test turned up positive, which is a good sign early on that the university is doing the right things to protect the health and safety of the players and everyone else involved with the football operation.

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There is no real change in the 14 players who tested positive a week ago. Nine of those cases remain active, according to the OU athletic department, and five are in recovery.

While we all know that things can change rapidly, as we’ve witnessed in this COVID-19 pandemic, the Oklahoma test results cast some much-needed sunshine on the prospects for a 2020 college football season that seemingly every day, with coronavirus cases starting to surge again all over the country, becomes more and more in doubt.

A number of schools have suspended voluntary workouts because of growing numbers of positive COVID tests, and this week the Ivy League put a stake in the ground announcing that it was cancelling all fall sports activities. That does not appear to be the present thinking of Power Five conference officials, but with so many moving parts still surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and just seven weeks to go before the scheduled start of the college season, we are rapidly approaching some critical decision dates.

While some schools had the players return to campus as early as the first week in June, Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley instead chose a wait-and-see approach in order to learn more and make sure the right protocols and procedures were in place to protect Sooner players from exposure to COVID-19 once they returned.

As we near the end of week two of voluntary workouts at Oklahoma, it appears the decision to delay the players’ return was both prudent and productive.