How college football is played in 2020 remains the big picture question that has no answers on May 28.
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby has talked previously about his concern over a disruption of a college football season when the normal flu season starts in the late fall and how that impacts college athletics. On Wednesday, he told CBS Sports HQ that the Big 12 Conference is planning for a disruption of a season.
“I expect we will have some outbreaks during the course of the school year on campuses and within athletics departments,” Bowlsby said. “We’ve been told to expect a bumpy road, so that’s what we’re preparing. I don’t think much of hope as a strategy, but we hope things will go smoothly and prepare as if they won’t be.”
Bowlsby isn’t talking in reference to the months of Aug., Sept. or even Oct., but the months to follow. That’s when the conference championship hunt is on. When conference championships are won and when national championships are being played for.
“We aren’t going to have the benefit of making lots of plans well in advance,” Bowlsby said. “We’re trying to get back to campus and workouts and some semblance of normalcy. Beyond that, we have a 12-game schedule. We start on Labor Day weekend and we’ll have to play it by ear. We don’t want to put anybody at risk from a health standpoint. We need to go through this and recognize that we’re dealing with mostly young, healthy athletes, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be transmitting the disease.
“We’re going to have some difficulties during the course of the year, and I fully expect we’ll have some disruptions. We are going to do everything we can to minimize the likelihood of those things happening and to optimize the disinfectant process that we have in our weight rooms, locker rooms and training rooms. And we’ll practice good social distancing,” Bowlsby continued. “It will be somewhat unique to individual institutions. This has always been managed by governors and public health officials and, to some extent, mayors. Soon it will be in the hands of university presidents and chancellors and then athletic directors.”
Bowlsby said playing on an uneven playing field has been the reality this whole time, so that this coronavirus pandemic isn’t causing something that isn’t systematically happening already.
Oklahoma is scheduled to begin the 2020 season on Sept. 5 at home against Missouri State.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3]