Oklahoma football: Big 12 sets minimum player availability requirements
By Chip Rouse
It’s been a long and winding road to the 2020 Oklahoma football season, but the wait is now just seven days away.
With the season start just a week away, the Big 12 Conference on Friday announced what it is calling its football game cancellation thresholds.
The reality of a college football season very much up in the air until about a month ago because health and safety concerns stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. When the month of August rolled around in this most unusual year, the Big 12, ACC and SEC decided to go ahead with football this fall while teams in the Big Ten and Pac-12 Conferences elected to sit out fall football in 2020.
Recognizing that no one knows exactly what might happen when the season actually gets underway, with the threat of coronavirus exposure hanging over everyone’s head and football being such a high-contact sport, the Big 12 has established some minimum standards under which a game can be played.
These standards include a minimum available roster, including a minimum number of available players in several position groups.
The minimum number of players required to play a game is set at 53. This includes one quarterback, seven offensive linemen and four defensive linemen.
Teams that are unable to meet these requirements, based on game-week COVID testing results, can elect to play the game, if they desire to do so, but if not, and upon the approval of Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, the game will be ruled as a “no-contest” if it cannot be rescheduled for a later date.
The Big 12’s revised nine-plus-one, round-robin schedule allows for nine conference games plus one nonconference game. In addition two bye dates are part of every Big 12 team’s schedule. Those open weekends will be used for rescheduling games, if necessary.
The nonconference portion of Oklahoma’s and the other Big 12 teams’ 2020 schedule kicks off next weekend. The conference season begins Sept. 26. Oklahoma will host Missouri State next Saturday and will be at home again on Sept. 26 against Kansas State.