Oklahoma’s final home game will go without a tradition among sports.
The Sooners will be hosting Baylor, but the pregame festivities will not last as long as they normally do for a last home game. The senior day at Oklahoma will not be happening, thanks to COVID-19.
Lincoln Riley made the announcement on Tuesday during his weekly press conference. He stated multiple reasons why as to senior day not taking place Saturday night.
“It’s something we’ve honestly been thinking about for the last three or four weeks,” he said. “Start thinking about it maybe two bye weeks ago we really started taking a dive in that and poll around and just kick around options. After talking to them and some of the kids and families and all that, we’ve decided we’re going to cancel the Senior Day festivities. I think for a few reasons. Obviously, there are a million reasons this year. Not being able to have families on the field. Not all families even being able to travel and be there for it. Not being able to do it in front of a full stadium, which that’s not the most important for me, but I think that is a factor. And I think that with all that’s going on right now, I just don’t know that we could do it the way we want to do it.
“We’ll still have our, here in the spring, hopefully at some point, if this thing has cleared up a little bit, we’ll be able to have a kind of senior night that we had with our guys and the staff that we did last year for the first time and everybody loved. We are definitely in plans, whether it’s a spring game or another home game, at some point in the future, going to come back and honor these guys and their families who have played their last game. We’re definitely not sweeping it under the rug. We want it to happen. But we want it to happen where we can do it the right way. We’ve communicated that to our guys who that could potentially affect and to their families as well.”
That means players like Erik Swenson, LaRon Stokes, Jon-Michael Terry, Caleb Kelly, Tre Brown and Chanse Sylvie won’t go through a senior day. This also allows Oklahoma to protect who may or not be taking advantage of the free year of eligibility in 2020.
The Sooners are also expected to lose at least Creed Humphrey to the NFL draft. Those at the game against Baylor will not know of any early NFL departures, either.
Oklahoma and Baylor is scheduled to kickoff at 7 p.m. CT.
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