Texas Football: Not everyone agreeing with Lincoln Riley for 2020 season

There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding Texas football and the rest of the Big 12 for the 2020 season thanks to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The 2020 college football season is getting cast into a shadow of doubt of late thanks to the novel coronavirus pandemic that effectively put the sports world on pause for a couple of months at least. There are sports working their way back, including some European soccer leagues, UFC, and NASCAR (which is starting back on May 17). And these are models that college football can use for the upcoming 2020 season so that nothing would be pushed back too far or cancelled out for the Texas football program.

But the problem for the Texas Longhorns football program, among a number of other Power Five teams, is going to be scheduling with the variation of opinions and responses from schools and conferences around the country. If the Longhorns have a good model to handle the COVID-19 pandemic response this fall, and students are back on campus, then they could be in a much different situation than for instance the LSU Tigers (their biggest non-conference opponent).

Any change like that to the Longhorns 2020 schedule would obviously radically shift their outlook for the coming season.

One prominent college head coach that is making his voice heard on the matter of late is Lincoln Riley of the Oklahoma Sooners. The often-discussed goal to get student-athletes potentially back to campus on June 1 is not one that Riley agrees with, according to an ESPN report from back on May 14.

Here’s what Riley had to say on the matter.

"“It would be completely irresponsible to bring these guys in too early,” he said. “We need to bring these guys in as late as we can. Every day they come in could be a day we could’ve gotten better, learned more about the virus, the [personal protection equipment] gets better, a day closer to a vaccine, the testing capabilities get better. It’s just not worth it.”"

Riley looks to believe in taking a more patient approach to the matter, but there are going to be conflicting opinions from other college head coaches of other Power Five programs. For instance, in an interview last week with the Dallas Morning News, Texas head coach Tom Herman gave his thoughts on how the country needed college football this coming season and why he thinks it will still happen in some form or fashion this year.

Here’s more on what Herman had to say on this matter.

"“That’s been the hard point to digest is that we don’t have sports to divert us from the bad things going on in our lives.”Herman isn’t ready to say college football will be back on Labor Day weekend with fans and a full schedule.He is convinced football will return in some way, shape or form, and one reason he’s hopeful: Herman still remembers where he was when President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium after 9/11. He thinks sports can be an outlet on the way to normalcy.“Are we going to be playing football? My gut tells me yes for a lot of different reasons,” Herman said. “The country needs it, our students need it, our fan base needs it. I go back to all the major tragedies that this country has endured, and sports has always been the thing that has unified us and taken our minds off whatever catastrophe that we’re dealing with.”"

Not only does Herman have at least a bit of a different viewpoint to Riley, other coaches and members of the media do as well. Apparently Reece Davis of ESPN’s College GameDay isn’t hearing the same thing from other college football coaches that he did from Riley on this matter. He joined up with Sportscenter on a Friday, May 15 segment to discuss further.

Here’s some of the more important pieces of that conversation (monologue thanks to 247Sports).

"“They feel that their staff are better equipped and better prepared or would be in the not-so distant future,” Davis said. “Keeping the facilities sanitized, safe and healthy. To be able to monitor the players’ health. All of those types of things that they feel might be better to do or the players might be better to do or at a local gym that might be open depending on which states they live in.“I had one coach bring up to me just this morning something that is also a part of it in terms sort of in line with what Lincoln said about not doing it too soon. You have to consider that there’s a Fourth of July holiday and what you certainly don’t want to do is to bring everyone back and have everyone disperse and return and the potential problems that might cause. But I think that by enlarge while all of the coaches that I’ve spoken to and athletic directors as well are in-step that they do it as safely as possible to make sure they protect as many people as possible. There are a lot of coaches that are feeling confident in their staff that once they’re allowed to do so that they would be able to monitor the safety and cleanliness and all of the stuff that is needed for return.”"

There are some really interesting points brought up here by Davis. He acknowledges what needs to be done to keep the players safe while still trying to keep the 2020 college football season up and running. Davis brought up the confidence that a lot of other college coaches and athletic directors have in the effectiveness of their schools to safely bring back the student-athletes.

Moreover, the next key date to watch in this process will be June 1, as some programs could be looking to bring back student-athletes for individual workouts as early as next month. It will be important to follow the SEC vote, set to reportedly (ESPN) happen on May 22, to decide whether to open up team facilities as early as June 1.

If the SEC does open up team facilities in what would just be a couple of weeks from now, then the Big 12 might try to find a model that will successfully follow in their footsteps. The Big 12 could also rely upon the likes of the MLB, Bundesliga, and the NBA if they are to all successfully return to some type of new game action in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, to figure out how to effectively keep players and team personnel safe.

Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby has often addressed how athletics will be impacted by COVID-19 amid the pandemic later on this year. He mentioned the obvious, that Big 12 athletics will have to learn how to “co-exist” with COVID-19 over the next two years.

Texas is supposed to open their 2020 season on Sep. 5 at home against the South Florida Bulls. While there is no definitive decision yet on what will happen with that game, and the rest of the 2020 slate, this is a conversation that is changing and continually developing week-after-week. There are going to be coaches around the Big 12 that have varying opinions in the process, and that could impact what happens this fall.

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