Lincoln Riley on Players Returning: ‘It’s One of the Most Ridiculous Things I’ve Heard’
The Oklahoma Sooners and other Big 12 teams are considering bringing back players to school next month as universities are expected to be open up this fall. That means college football players could be on campus as soon as next month, which OU head coach Lincoln Riley is not on board with.
Riley was adamant about that in a statement on Thursday.
SEC Presidents will vote next week whether to bring student-athletes back to campus on June 1. Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley: “All this talk of schools wanting to bring players back on June 1st is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard”
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) May 14, 2020
Jason Kersey with The Athletic had more from Riley, “In my opinion, we need to bring them in as late as we possibly can before we play a season. Every day early that we bring them in is a day we could have gotten better. It’s a day we could’ve learned more about the virus. It’s a day PPE maybe gets better. It’s a day closer to a vaccine. It’s a day that our testing equipment and testing capabilities get better, and it’s just not worth it. So, we’ve got to be patient. We get one shot at this, and we’ve got to do it right.”
That’s quite a difference from his in-state rival coach Mike Gundy who said last month he wanted to open up on May 1st and added, “We get people that get the flu during the season. We quarantine them, we treat them, we make sure they’re healthy and we bring them back. It would be the same thing here, but at some point, we’ve got to go back to work. We’ve got to get these guys back in here.”
Gundy would eventually go on to apologize for those comments.
Needless to say it’s another sign that the transition back to the college football world as we know it won’t be a smooth one with different states, conferences, and universities making decisions based on what they think is the best interest of their people.
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