‘We’ll be prepared to adjust’: As season closes in, Mizzou, SEC keeping options open
The calendar continues to creep toward the college football season, but there are still no concrete plans as to how it will look in the Southeastern Conference because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Missouri Tigers’ season kickoff — and MU coach Eliah Drinkwitz’s debut — is scheduled for Sept. 5 against Central Arkansas at Faurot Field. But there are reports of possible changes, whether that be the season is moved to the spring or a conference-only schedule.
MU athletic director Jim Sterk said he’s continued meeting bi-weekly with the 13 other SEC athletic directors and conference officials to discuss those very issues. But any major decision is still imminent, with the SEC sifting through 12 possible scenarios and a likely late-July time frame for any determination.
“There’s a bunch of different models for football,” Sterk said on a Thursday video call. “We’ll be prepared to adjust if necessary to a schedule that best accommodates what we’re hearing from the medical officials and campus officials at the time.”
While the SEC hasn’t announced any changes, other conferences — including fellow Power Five conferences — have already made moves. The Ivy League said Wednesday it is shelving all sports until 2021.
The Big Ten announced Thursday it will conduct a conference-only football schedule if there is a fall football season. Other reports include the Pac-12 and ACC moving toward a similar decision regarding a conference-only season.
Sterk said he’d be surprised if any moves became official at other conferences, but they’ll have another call with SEC officials Friday to discuss logistics.
“Commissioner (Greg) Sankey will update us on what the latest is,” Sterk said. “I’ve seen some that are saying no competition possibly until the first of September. All those things are on the table and will be discussed and made at the appropriate time.”
There was some initial optimism of an on-time college football season as preparation ramped up earlier this summer in the form of voluntary workouts. But there’s been a change in tune because of how many positive cases have surfaced in relation to those voluntary workouts.
Missouri student-athletes returned to Columbia in anticipation of a June 8 start to voluntary workouts. MU announced Wednesday that is had administered 377 tests for the novel coronavirus, showing 10 positive cases. Sterk said none of those positive results were connected to workouts or facilities at Mizzou.
Other schools have not been as fortunate. K-State, Kansas and Ohio State are among the schools that have shut down voluntary workouts because they had too many positive tests.
“A lot of work is being done with (testing),” Sterk said. “I just appreciate the heck out of the people that helped us design what we’re doing and are implementing it and are continuing to stay on top of it.”
Sterk said conference-only scheduling offers certain perks. Keeping competition in the SEC, the conference can implement its own testing procedures in a uniform manner. That’s not the case for nonconference games, where lower-level teams — like Central Arkansas — might not have the resources for diligent COVID-19 testing ahead of game-week.
“It’s a comfort level of how protocols are being enacted, how testing is done and then keeping it within that family — it’s an expanded social circle or social pod,” Sterk said. “You might be able to control things more that way or feel like you can anyway versus the unknown of people coming from outside of our 11 states.”
But implementing a conference-only schedule is not as simple as just excluding certain games from the schedule. Guaranteed games have contracts with six-figure payouts, for instance.
Deputy athletic director Nick Joos elaborated on some of the hurdles Missouri could face. He said MU’s general counsel has asked the Tigers to go to their four nonconference opponents this season — Central Arkansas, Eastern Michigan, BYU and Louisiana — and add pandemic language into those contracts.
“The lawyers could become very busy here,” Joos said, “depending on how this all shakes out in the coming months.”
Sterk said the MU ticket office has 13 different variations when it comes to how many fans will be allowed at games if there is a season.
They’re starting with a 50% model and can modify it from there, Sterk said. In any projections, Sterk added, perhaps 18,000-20,000 fans would be allowed at games if they’re all socially distanced and 6 feet apart. A lot of money is riding on whether fans are allowed to watch college football in some capacity next season.
While other conferences are making concrete decisions about any adjustments of a fall football season, Sterk said Mizzou standing by until he and other SEC leaders have sifted through the many options.
“The conferences do a really good job and maybe a better job in a lot of those areas,” Sterk said. “It’s tough to make a decision in one-size-fits-all. There’s programs that have different numbers of people, different resources and all those things, so I can see where it’s difficult to have rules.”
This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 5:24 PM.