The 2020 College Football Season: 'We're Going to Be Ready for Any of It'

Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione says it's vital to have multiple contingencies ready for whatever the season might look like

With all the opinions and projections and hopeful forecasts being discussed about the potential start of college football, it seems appropriate to reexamine the comments made Friday morning by University of Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione.

Castiglione appeared on KREF’s “T-Row In the Morning” with voice of the Sooners Toby Rowland and offered both optimism and caution about the idea of returning from the Coronavirus shutdown.

LISTEN TO TOBY ROWLAND INTERVIEW JOE CASTIGLION ON KREF

“We have to be ready for just about anything that comes as a result of how we reorient ourselves back into the new normal — however that’s going to be defined,” Castiglione said.

He expressed a desire to move forward, but with a high degree of prudence.

“I think this time is to try to keep the main priorities in order,” Castiglione said. “First and foremost get through this, however that’s going to happen. Get through it healthy. And we don’t know what the world (after) is going to look like, exactly. We can sit here and speculate all we want. But get through it healthy, get through it safe, everybody’s ready to go, we’ll figure it out — whatever that is. It might be tough. It might be, you know, completely unlike what we ever could have expected.”

Castiglione said there were numerous possibilities in regard to the college football season, and it was vital to identify and establish protocols for multiple contingencies.

“We have to be smart and try to figure out if there are ways that we can make adjustments,” he said, “whether you start on time, whether that means the season is delayed, whether we have a shortened season.

“But we’re trying to do everything we can to be ready.”

Castiglione said “there’s no way to put a percentage on” whether college football could start as scheduled. Up next on the calendar are conference media days in mid-July. Training camps start in early August and the regular season is set to begin Aug. 29.

But by the time summer gets here, that could look completely different.

Joe Castiglione

“For the last couple weeks, I’ve been talking with people nationally about the possibility of playing football in the spring,” Castiglione said. “I think that the bottom line is we’re trying to find any way we can to have a football season.”

Without football, every athletic department in the country — and some universities — would operate in a significant financial deficit. As football funds scholarships for most other sports on campus, the potential exists that many of those sports could be shut down, meaning student-athletes would be without the means to attend college.

“If we’re not playing football at all during the upcoming year, that is something that no one has ever imagined,” Castiglione said. “But now we’re having to do that. You know, what does that look like financially? And it’s not a pretty picture at all, and that’s the daunting part of trying to do all these different contingency plans and the scenarios — that if this happens, then what happens then? Or if this doesn’t happen, then what do we do in that case? And a lot of it, people might say you shouldn’t be wasting your time. Well, that’s not the way we work.

“… Until we can ascertain whether we’re going to have the kind of opportunities to bring people back together again — whether it’s for practice, whether it’s gathering in places like a stadium — that remains to be seen when it’s determined.

“But we’re going to be ready for any of it.”

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