Texas head coach Tom Herman believes it’s a promising sign that the Big 12 has not announced any concrete scheduling-affecting decisions yet.
Herman recently joined the College Football Podcast with Kevin Negandhi and David Pollack. He had every right to feel defeated, disheartened, or disappointed shortly after his program’s non-conference contest with LSU come off of the schedule due to the SEC moving to a conference-only format.
But he wasn’t. Even with a decision likely coming on Monday after the league’s 10 presidents reviewed two primary scheduling models, Herman remained as optimistic as ever.
The two likely models on the table are a full 12-game schedule or a 10-game schedule that would include one non-conference game. Herman appreciates the time being taken by the Big 12 to fully dissect all available options.
“I think the optimism is, one, that we haven’t made any decision just yet. I think our leadership as well as the leadership and other conferences believe that it is prudent to wait as long as possible before making any concrete schedule-affecting decisions. That gives me confidence that although time is running out we still do have time, as little as it may be.”
The other avenue of optimism is provided by his players. It appears the Longhorns are willing to navigate through any possible options in order to be able to play football this season.
“They want to play. They want to find a way, obviously, with the utmost protection that we can provide them, but they’re very eager to find new and different ways to operate. I think those are probably the two biggest ways that, at least me personally, that I get confidence in is, one, that the players really, really want to play and they’re willing to jump through a lot of hoops in order to get that done.”
While time is seemingly running out, you can bet that the Big 12 will have explored every route possible after a thorough investigation on how to move forward with scheduling.