I have no idea what they’re thinking.
The University of Texas at Austin will kick off the football season Sept. 5, albeit with a stadium open at half its capacity, athletics officials told ticket holders Monday.
While both NCAA and Big 12 Conference officials have yet announce firm decisions on how college football will proceed as schools grapple with the pandemic, Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte sent an email Monday to season ticket holders announcing the season would move forward as planned.
“I want you to know that as we are working toward hosting football games this season, our number one priority remains the health and safety of our student-athletes, staff and fans,” Del Conte wrote.
To align with capacity restrictions designated by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this summer, Del Conte said seating at the Darrell K. Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium will be reduced to 50% to facilitate social distancing, meaning around 50,000 Longhorns could potentially be seated in stands next fall.
The decision comes on the heels of an outbreak among student athletes shortly after they arrived on campus to begin voluntary summer workouts. The school also reported its first death, a staff member, earlier this month. There have been more than 500 COVID-19 cases at UT-Austin since March, according to the school’s dashboard.
But officials have pushed forward with kicking off the football season as planned. The annual game between the Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners occurs during the State Fair of Texas, which organizers canceled this year. Still, Del Conte said earlier this month that the game will be played.
I mean, I know that Greg Abbott says its OK, but there’s just no way on God’s field-turfed Earth that this makes any sense. I certainly hope that we will have this current outbreak under some control by September 5, but does anyone think that virus levels will be low enough to allow for this kind of mass gathering? Again, I remind you, professional sports is gingerly and haltingly trying to play games in front of empty stadia, in some cases with teams that have been and will continue to be completely isolated from the rest of the world. What makes the NCAA think they can do better than that?
(Can you imagine being the owner of a restaurant that’s classified as a bar, or a winery, or a craft brewery with a beer garden and reading this story? The risk assessment here is just off the charts wacko.)
(Apparently, the beer gardens can reopen now. If they are aware of this very quiet decision, anyway.)
OK, I get that Chris Del Conte needs to address his season ticket holders, and assure them that the Longhorns are on top of this situation, and that if by some miracle they can play football in front of fans this year, UT has a plan to accommodate as many of them as they can. But geez, this is amazingly tone deaf.
Meanwhile, in something closer to the real world.
The Southwestern Athletic Conference on Monday became the latest conference to move its fall athletic calendar to the spring of 2021 due to concerns related to the COVID-19 global pandemic. The safety of its student-athletes was at the forefront of the decision.
“We’re still going to play football. It’s just a matter of moving it to the spring,” Texas Southern football coach Clarence McKinney said. “I like the decision. It gives us a chance to slow down and come up with a true plan to protect our student-athletes.”
Texas Southern, along with Prairie View A&M, is part of the SWAC’s five-state footprint that includes schools in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas. Other fall sports impacted in the move are volleyball, cross country and soccer.
A part of the Football Championship Subdivision, the SWAC will go to a seven-game schedule in the spring of 2021, with the conference championship game hopefully to be played no later than April 30. Each football team will play six conference games (four divisional/two nondivisional) with an option to play one nonconference game.
I like their chances better than I like UT’s, I’ll say that much.
UT is looking pretty stupid right now.
Stay tuned for Austin’s COVID #s come ~Sept 19th.