Big 12 Football: Mike Gundy presumptuous about return to football ops

Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy has an early start date in mind for when the first Big 12 football operations could be back up and running.

With the entirety of the Big 12 football conference being placed on pause at the moment due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, programs are bracing for what will happen for the upcoming 2020 season. College football and the NFL are two of the more hotly contested debates at the moment since their seasons are set to start in the late summer/early fall.

Will the Texas Longhorns football program be able to get back up and running safely, and what will that look like?

Not just the Longhorns, but each of the 10 programs in the Big 12 are going to have to follow the lead of other sports leagues like the MLB, NBA, and NHL with how to tackle this COVID-19 recovery timeline.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman just opened up on April 7 (per NBC Sports Pro Hockey Talk) with the possibility of hockey not coming back this season, but nothing is set in stone there yet. It sounds like the NHL is preparing for all options to bring back the season and hold some type of playoff structure, but also for cancelling the 2019-20 campaign entirely.

Meanwhile, the MLB is looking into options about how they could get up and running in a training camp or preseason like lead in to their 2020 regular season as early as next month (per ESPN). The MLB is also looking into playing in front of empty stadiums for the start of the season at the very least.

And the NBA is formulating a plan to test players in less than an hour to make sure that returning to game action will be safe. But NBA commissioner Adam Silver also stated that there is likely to be no definitive decision on a season restart date until May 1.

So how does this pertain to college football, and more specifically the Big 12?

Notre Dame Fighting Irish athletic director Jack Swarbrick was quoted saying on April 7 (per Rivals) that he wants “fans in the stands” this coming season. He’s also one of many targeting June 1 for a potential decision date for what to do about the upcoming college football season.

Swarbrick and a number of other athletic directors are following the lead of the professional sports leagues in North America to find guidance in formulating their timeline.

However, a voice closer to home as it pertains to the Longhorns spoke up on what his ideal timeline is to get back a bit closer to normal in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak. Oklahoma State Cowboys head football coach Mike Gundy reportedly discussed on April 7 that he was looking for a May 1 target date to get back to football operations in their own building.

Here’s what else Gundy had to say on the matter of Oklahoma State’s football operations timeline and the state of college football right now.

"“How fast that can happen based on the tests that are available, I can’t say right now, but that’s the plan,” Gundy told more than a dozen reporters on a teleconference. “We have to have a plan, and the plan right now is for them to start on May 1. It might get backed up two weeks. I don’t know, I can’t make that call, but if it does, we’ll start with the employees of this company, the ones that come in this building. Then we’ll bring the players in, and slowly but surely we’ll test them all in.”"

It sounds like this isn’t a definitive set start date that Gundy has in mind for Oklahoma State’s football operations and staff. But that is certainly a more ambitious start date than any of the professional sports leagues have in mind right now.

The NBA isn’t even looking to make a decision to return to game action until Gundy is ready to start getting his football staff back together in Stillwater again. And the NHL and MLB would likely have their start/restart dates a few weeks to a month after (at the very least) Oklahoma State would be getting back up and running heading into summer.

The Big 12 also released an official statement back on March 29 stating that there were to be “no organized, in-person team activities of any type, in any location”, among other rules. The NCAA mandated in-person recruiting contact dead period that lasts through May 31 is also a timeline that interferes with Gundy’s plan.

It is clear that Gundy’s plan is bold and one that wasn’t shared by any other Big 12 head coach up to this point.

Texas was originally set to begin spring camp for football back in March. And the spring football game was set for April 25. Getting any spring practice in has little to no chance of happening at this point. Summer workouts are likely to be the next targeted restart date for the offseason timeline of the Longhorns.

For more information on COVID-19, you can visit the CDC’s website.