Lincoln Riley is confident college football will happen, even if the format looks different than past years.
The Big Ten and Pac-12 both announced they will be moving to conference-only play, but Riley explained there’s reason to find a solution to going ahead with the season.
“I just can’t imagine a scenario [where we don’t explore every option to play],” Riley told ESPN on Tuesday. “Whether it’s something we do in the fall, whether it’s a shortened season, whether it’s spring, there’s nothing we should take off the table. Regardless of what we have to do, I don’t think there’s anything we can’t work around and we can’t adjust and can’t make work in order to play college football. We’ve all got to do our part on that.”
Riley and the Sooners have been at the forefront of transparency, releasing the results of their tests for the last couple weeks. Initially, Oklahoma had 14 players test positive for the virus, but announced no new tests as of July 8.
“The health and safety is the most important thing, and that’s the determining factor,” Riley said. “If we can’t do it, we can’t do it. But if we can, college football is so important to these communities, these universities, these athletes… not just football athletes, but college football affects every athlete on every campus. It’s a big, big deal. It’s not more important than health, but if we can get it to a safe place, we’ve got to find a way to get it done, whenever and however.”
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