Oklahoma Will Pause Preseason Workouts

After a month of returning zero new positive COVID-19 cases, an adjusted game schedule means players will be cut loose and return Aug. 14

Uncertainty over the 2020 fall football schedule — specifically, who and when Oklahoma will begin the season — has caused OU to pause preseason workouts for a week.

“With that first game pushed back a week or two, it only makes sense to spread out our practices and give our guys some time away,” head coach Lincoln Riley said Saturday night in an OU press release.

Football players practiced Saturday morning — it was the team’s fifth practice this preseason since opening on July 31 — and will essentially take a week off, returning to campus on Friday, Aug. 14. At that time they’ll resume COVID-19 testing protocols.

That’s likely the hard part for Riley, athletic director Joe Castiglione and the OU medical team: the Sooners didn’t have a positive COVID-19 test result for four straight weeks after returning to campus back on July 1, when 14 players tested positive.

Two rounds of COVID-19 testing this week, however, produced one positive test result out of 205 combined player tests. The university reports that player is under quarantine.

“They’ve done a great job so far,” Riley said of players’ behavior away from training camp.

“We decided it’s best to give our players some time off,” Riley said. “We were able to start camp before the vast majority of teams because our Aug. 29 season-opening game date was the earliest in the country.”

OU’s opener — presumably still with Missouri State, although the Missouri Valley Conference has canceled league games without forcing schools to cancel their non-conference games — doesn’t have a date yet.

The Sooners were scheduled to play the Bears on Sept. 5, but Castiglione received a waiver from the NCAA to push it up to Aug. 29. Now, with the Big 12 schedule likely to start Sept. 26 — if there is a season at all, that is — there are plenty of Saturdays open in September.

As actions from other conferences have altered plans nationwide, Riley said he’s been “mindful of all the conversations across the country with regard to the 2020 season. The added benefit of temporarily breaking from training camp is that it gives us a few more days to monitor those talks.”

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