Things are on-schedule for Ohio State football, at least for now.
While appearing on local ESPN affiliate 97.1 The Fan on Wednesday, OSU athletic director Gene Smith confirmed that the program will begin walk-throughs on Friday, and if all goes well, will begin fall camp on Friday, August 7.
There were some questions on that timeline when the Buckeyes had to put a pause on voluntary workouts because of some positive COVID-19 tests through some of the first waves of testing, but since then, Ohio State has resumed workouts.
And as approved by the NCAA, the times for both walkthroughs and the beginning of fall camp are right on schedule and on-line as the earliest they can commence for OSU.
So, that should be some good news, albeit with a sense of cautious optimism still at best. Smith reiterated that there’s still a long way to go to determine what this fall will look like.
“I think everyone that works in the industry and everyone who’s paying attention understands that there are a lot of moving parts,” Smith said while appearing on The Fan. “We just need to be patient and allow our experts around this virus to continue to do their work and give us guidance so that we can make some leadership decisions.”
Smith did, however, indicate that the conference will do everything it can to have college football this season. He pointed to the flexibility of going to a conference-only schedule as a step in that direction.
“The flexibility that having September to schedule games or not provides us unbelievable opportunity,” Smith said. “The beauty of what we did, we felt, is that it gave us the ability to slide the schedule. If for some reason we can’t start on Sept. 5, we can slide it because we control the schedule. We’re still in the process of defining what the schedule will be, but it would give us the flexibility to slide. Hopefully, if we can’t play ‘x’ number of games, we can play ‘y’ number of games. We have young people whose futures are aligned with their opportunities to play this fall. We’ve got to make sure we don’t overreact and we give them a chance. I also think athletics can help galvanize our country and our communities in a storm or a crisis. I think if we’re fortunate enough to have sports, it will help us as we try and transition back to the new next.”
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Smith has a point, and one I have pondered and discussed with others. It seems like sports can reunite this country — and has during difficult times. It certainly helped the country heal after 9/11, and gives people something to rally around and be hopeful about.
We could use a little of that now as we all battle so-called hoaxes, mask-orders, shutdowns, and the debate of racial equality.
And while having full-fledged practices and workouts is somewhat concerning to Smith, he does appear to be a little more optimistic than when he got on a call with reporters last time. At that time, he painted a rather grim picture of where his mindset was, but has seen encouraging things with how things have been handled internally since.
“I don’t have a comfort level there yet, but I do relative to what we’ve done in the voluntary workout space, what we’re gonna start doing July 24th when we start walkthroughs, I feel really, really good.”
As we keep saying, we’ll have to just be patient on all of this and see how it all plays out. It seems to be an on-again, off-again college football love affair, but things are still heading in the right direction for now.
You can listen to the entire segment thanks to the Bishop and Laurinaitis Show below.
Gene Smith – @OSU_AD – (Ohio State Athletic Director) 7-22-20 https://t.co/jimgoKZBBD
— Bishop and Laurinaitis (@971BLS) July 22, 2020
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