Training camp date? Fans at Husky Stadium? Athletic director on 2020 season, COVID-19
The biggest question surrounding the 2020 football season is whether it will happen.
Nobody, including Washington athletic director Jen Cohen, has the answer just yet. But the details of what a potential season would look like started coming into focus in recent weeks, including an updated Pac-12 schedule and a starting date for training camp.
During a phone interview on Thursday, Cohen offered her insight on those topics as well as other pressing issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and the upcoming season.
Training camp start date
The Pac-12 began allowing 20 hours of summer access mandatory activities on Aug. 3, and UW started those workouts this week. Training camp can commence as early as Aug. 17, but that date is subject to allowance by public health orders and medical advice.
“We’re talking about maybe a little bit later than that just based on the way our schedule works,” Cohen said.
Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said during a media webinar last week that coaches and schools will individually decide when to start training camp and how to manage the 25 allotted practices. The first games are scheduled for Sept. 26.
UW has between 240-250 student-athletes in its athletic village, which Cohen said is a little more than one-third of the university’s total student-athlete population. Those athletes have been tested more than 700 times with nine positive cases — including several that were caught upon the athletes’ arrival on campus.
UW said in its most recent update on Wednesday that 247 athletes had been tested with two active positive cases, one new this week.
“Our student-athletes are doing a hell of a job keeping themselves healthy,” Cohen said. “What’s kind of unclear, at least to everybody in the medical community, is OK, how does that translate once you go to contact? How do face coverings work? What is the research showing you about face coverings? What testing protocols need to change between now and then?
“We’re doing surveillance testing. Are we going to need to test multiple times a week once you start fall camp and schedule against competition? That’s where I think there’s been a little confusion around protocols, around COVID, in particular with our student-athletes.
“Right now … each school is following their own public and county health guidelines around testing. Once people do transition into practices and for sure when we play each other, there’s a set of protocols that will be finalized around testing and other protocols that the medical group will mandate. If we’re playing, we’re going to have to be following those. But because those are still fluid, because those change with the data and the science and the information, I think that’s a little unclear for a lot of people.”
The new football schedule
The Pac-12 released its 10-game, conference-only football schedule on July 31 with games expected to begin on Sept. 26. The Huskies would open against Stanford at Husky Stadium.
Each Pac-12 team will play five home games and five road games, and the conference is prepared to push back the start of the season to a later date if necessary. Games that are unable to be played on scheduled dates can be made up during bye weeks or in Week 12 (Dec. 12).
Cohen said she believes that schedule gives teams the best chance to make it through a full season.
“It gives us flexibility if we can’t start even at the end of September, we could start in October and we could still play,” Cohen said. “And again, I think just playing within the league and playing each other, it gives you a lot more freedom than when you’re playing games outside of your conference.”
Cohen said the Pac-12 prepared a variety of different scenarios for the season, including the 10-game slate it decided on. Designing the schedules included the athletic directors and coaches.
“The league took the lead as far as trying to create responsibility and how we were going to be able to start later, how we would make up games, how that lined up,” Cohen said.
“Like most football scheduling, you don’t get everything that you want. But in this circumstance, in particular, I would say the group was probably more so than ever focused on what was best for the conference and just trying to find a way to get these games.”
About that Michigan game
Before the Big 10 and Pac-12 both scrapped their non-conference schedules, UW was set to open the season in a much-anticipated game against Michigan on Sept. 5. It was the first game in a home-and-home, with the Huskies set to travel to Ann Arbor in 2021.
UW and Michigan have yet to set a date to make up the game at Husky Stadium. With so much uncertainty remaining around fall schedules, Cohen and Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel agreed to revisit the conversation at the end of August or early September.
“It’s tricky with what schedules are already done and what openings we might have, but who knows what the next couple years are going to look like with how scheduling is going to work, anyway,” Cohen said. “So, I know we’ll try to get it back to Seattle as soon as possible.”
Attendance questions
Will there be fans in Husky Stadium this fall?
Maybe.
UW still has time to make that call, and Cohen said that’s one of the benefits of starting the season late. She’s had conversations with both Washington State and the Seattle Seahawks about the topic, and she said the UW athletic department staff has “modeled every socially-distanced stadium you can imagine,” and each scenario varies in percentages.
While a specific plan hasn’t been announced, Cohen said it’s clear Husky Stadium wont be at full capacity.
“We really try to be measured, and I’ve really struggled with this personally just because our fans are amazing and we can’t do it without them,” Cohen said. “We don’t want to take them for granted.
“We tried to manage expectations by not making any decisions too soon and like sharing something and then having it be different. … If we were to play tomorrow, we obviously wouldn’t be able to have people in the stands. Will the circumstances change in the next several weeks? I hope so, but I don’t know.”
“We’re still going to be having the conversations about our season, too. We have a great plan to play fall sports and we feel good about the way we’re approaching that with football as well as our other fall sports. But we all recognize that the plan to play and even practice with contact is going to be dictated based on our medical advisors and our public health officials and that is evolving and changing every day.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 2:38 PM.
