Oklahoma football: Big 12 not ready to commit to conference-only games
By Chip Rouse
The Oklahoma football schedule for the 2020 season is already changing, and it may change some more before all is said and done.
The Oklahoman is reporting that OU athletic director Joe Castiglione has requested a waiver from the NCAA that would enable the Sooners to move their season-opening game against Missouri State from Sept. 5 to August 29. The reason for the request is a precautionary move tied to COVID-19 concerns.
What Castiglione wants to achieve is a week off between all of its nonconference games. With coronavirus cases continuing to spike around the country, the extra week between the three nonconference games could be valuable with the testing of players for the coronavirus, writes Oklahoman sports columnist Berry Tramel, and any follow-up action that might be required should any players test positive for the virus.
There was already a week off between Oklahoma’s home date with Tennessee on Sept. 12 and the scheduled trip to Army for a game on Sept. 26.
The Big Ten Conference has thrown down the gauntlet and set forth a movement to eliminate nonconference games all together this season. Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said on Thursday that the conference will shorten its schedule to play only conference games, “thereby eliminating long-distance travel and lengthy hotel stays.” Warren added that the move “help ensure that the players are being correctly tested for the coronavirus in a universal fashion.”
There are multiple sources, according to The Oklahoman, saying that the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Pac-12 are expected to follow the Big Ten’s lead.
That would leave the Southeastern Conference and the Big 12 as the only Power Five leagues that still intend to include nonconference opponents on their schedules.
The 2020 Oklahoma football schedule is subject to change.
In an interview with the Des Moines Register on Thursday, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby expressed surprise that the Big Ten jumped the gun and didn’t wait a little longer to decide on going with a conference-only schedule in 2020.
Bowlsby said the Big 12 has not made such a decision and does not plan to soon announce a conference-only plan. He also pointed out that playing only conference opponents does not mean the season won’t start until early October. It only means you are able to spread out the games on the schedule, similar to what Oklahoma is trying to do with its non-conference schedule.
Of course all of this might end up being just nice posturing. There are quite a few folks who seriously doubt there will even be a 2020 college football season, and with COVID cases on the increase in many of the cities where Big 12 schools exist, not to mention the South (SEC land) and the West Coast (Pac-12), every week the numbers continue to rise, the odds for a delayed, disrupted or cancelled season also go up.
The Ivy League announced this week that it is cancelling all fall sports activities, which of course included football, the first such conference known to do so.
Earlier this week, officials of the Texas State Fair announced the event was being cancelled this year. One of the highlights of the Oklahoma-Texas rivalry game is that it is staged at the Cotton Bowl, located on the fairgrounds, during the Texas State Fair. On the day of the OU-Texas game anywhere from 200,000 to 250,000 people attend the fair, and 92,000 are nestled inside the Cotton Bowl, with half of the stadium decked out in crimson and the other half burnt orange.
The annual Red River Showdown, as the border-war rivalry is now billed, will be a strange sight indeed this year with no one at the fairgrounds and likely few if anyone in the stands at the Cotton Bowl.
In recent years the Red River game has been scheduled for an 11 a.m. kickoff (both FOX Sports and ESPN consider early-morning games prime time slots over their afternoon schedule), but there is some talk, although barely a whisper at this point, that this year the game could be moved to a primetime evening start because of the extenuating circumstances.
Anyway you want to look at it, things are going to be very different in college football this year, and the schedule is probably the least of all the green-yellow-red concerns and decisions to be made in the weeks directly ahead.