Texas Longhorns Football Season in Doubt According Austin’s Interim Health Authority

Austin’s Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escot made a statement regarding the potential Texas football games scheduled for the fall.

Austin’s Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escot made a statement regarding the potential Texas football games scheduled for the fall.

When it comes to home games in Austin, Escot thinks “it’s not really living in the realm of reality for what we’re likely to experience this fall.”

Last week, Texas Longhorns Athletic Director Chris Del Conte announced that Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium will be filled at 50% capacity for UT football home games in 2020. Dr. Escot told CBS Sports he was surprised by the comments. 

“We were caught a little off guard with the announcement that they intended to open the stadium with 50% capacity — which is in the neighborhood of 50,000 people in one place… I’ll say again what I said a month or two ago, and that is that large gatherings are the first thing that closed down and should be the last thing to open up again.”

Going even further, the Interim Health Authority showed skepticism about a football season happening at all:

“I think the idea of having 50,000 people in one space is a bit of reach right now,” Escott said… “Quite frankly, I think it’s going to be a struggle for us to even allow teams to play on a field without the crowd.” This statement comes just a month after the Big Ticket was released to Longhorn students.

While the program has been testing athletes daily, the Longhorns currently sit at zero new cases of the virus. This is an encouraging step in the right direction to hopefully having the season opener start on September 5th as scheduled