Since the NCAA announced on Wednesday that the moratorium on no on-campus activity would be lifted on June 1 for football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball, the talk of who will return first came instantly.
Many college football fans don’t want their respective teams to be ‘behind’ of their opponents. There are surely plenty of college football coaches who feel the same.
Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley was outspoken about June 1 being a “ridiculous” date to bring football players back. Kansas State athletic director can ease Riley’s tension as he let it be known the Big 12 won’t allow voluntary workouts until at least June 15.
“We weren’t expecting that, quite frankly,” said Gene Taylor in an ask the AD appearance on Kansas State’s athletics website. “Shane Lyons, who is the athletic director at West Virginia, sits on the management council, and we literally had a call (Tuesday) and he said that he felt (the NCAA Division I Council) was going to come out in their meeting (Wednesday) and say it was going to be a football-only recommendation, and only be a recommendation of if you wanted to go back June 1 you could, but it was going to be up to each conference to make that decision.
“Then it came out that it is going to be June 1 — ‘and by the way, it’s football and men’s and women’s basketball.’ Now the challenge of that is we’ve been telling our coaches and our athletes it probably wasn’t going to be June 1, at least in meetings that we’ve had. Our presidents and chancellors in the Big 12 really are going to be the final decision makers, so even though they’ve come out with June 1, we still have some work to do, and I don’t think those voluntary activities will happen at least in the Big 12 until June 15.”
The Big 12 has yet to make an official announcement on its own conferences moratorium being lifted for voluntary workouts.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3]