Del Conte feels proud of university’s response
AD consulted peers, formed plan for return amid novel coronavirus pandemic, unrest
AUSTIN — Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte feels a bit like George Clooney these days. Not the actor himself, but one of his characters: Billy Tyne, protagonist of “The Perfect Storm.”
For the past three months, Del Conte has been trying to guide the Longhorns through a storm, just as Tyne tried to captain the Andrea Gail through a violent hurricane.
A global pandemic ravaged the country and altered daily life on an extraordinary scale. The U.S. economy plunged back into recession. Unemployment numbers ballooned. And over the past few weeks, an inspired and determined social justice movement has spread across the nation in response to the killing of Houston native George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a Minneapolis police officer.
“It really reminds me of ‘The Perfect Storm,’ ” Del Conte said Thursday afternoon by phone. “You have all these events swirling at once. It’s nothing like anyone has ever seen before, and just we’re sailing right into it, right through it. It’s a wild time. Everyone says unprecedented, and it is.”
Del Conte couldn’t possibly know how everything would unfold when be boarded a flight to Kansas City in March for the Big 12 men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. At that time, confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S had yet to top 1,000. Everyone was still clinging to hope, especially with the start of the NCAA Tournament within reach.
“At that time, so much of the attention was still on Wuhan,
where the outbreak started,” Del Conte said. “But we didn’t know, in Kansas City, if we’d be playing with fans, with half capacity, no fans or what. There was some uncertainty going in. But we tried to adapt and control it as best we could.”
Del Conte was on the Sprint Center’s court the morning of March 12 when the conference decided to cancel both tournaments. That’s when the longtime administrator realized these were uncharted waters.
Del Conte tends to look first to the past when the unexpected strikes. And he had an experienced coterie of minds to lean on.
He’s in an ongoing, almost constant chat with seven current athletic directors. Together, they tried to figure out how to navigate something as sudden and devastating as a life-altering pandemic.
Then he dug back deeper.
Del Conte reached out to former Texas AD and longtime friend DeLoss Dodds. He spoke with former Arizona AD Jim Livengood, whom Del Conte worked under from 2000-06. Maybe most importantly, he picked the brain of former Tulane AD Rick Dickson, a former colleague who navigated the New Orleansbased university through the traumatic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“There’s no playbook for this, right?” Del Conte said. “The Spanish flu was a century ago. We’ve never dealt with a pandemic like this, shutting down not just college sports but the world, in our time. But you still look to the past. You find similar moments and try to learn from that.
“Rick was at Tulane during all the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. And I’m not comparing this to that, but he had more experience with something of this caliber than most. Having to suspend and cancel sports and moving some athletics off campus.”
Most important for Del Conte throughout this experience has been his own internal task force. The “Get Back to the Forty Acres” committee is composed of four “cross-functional” groups led by senior personnel within the Texas athletic department.
One group is overseeing the plan for the staff. Another, led by Chris Plonsky, is doing the same for student-athletes. There’s also a facilities and game day logistics group and a donor and fan experiences team.
The school also has worked closely with Dell Seton Medical Center, the Big 12 and the city of Austin on crafting a phased plan of action to allow athletes to return to campus and remain safe.
What came out of that collaboration was two manuals distributed on June 8: a 45-page COVID-19 guide for employees and a 16-page “return to campus” plan for athletes. The pages contain everything from testing and reporting policies, what the response will be to a positive COVID-19 test, a strict carpool policy, and how to fill out mandatory daily screening questionnaires.
Del Conte also has managed to keep all of Texas’ ongoing construction projects — the south end zone expansion at Royal-Memorial Stadium, the Moody Center, and the new basketball and rowing training facility — on track. In fact, the future home of men’s and women’s basketball has even surged a bit ahead of schedule thanks to a reduction in traffic.
“I can’t say enough about just how proud I am of everyone,” Del Conte said. “It’s been a huge effort. And we’ve largely had to do this whole thing in the virtual realm. So it’s just I think we’ve done as good as we can, and we’re still working.”
Still, Del Conte is far from peaceful waters.
This week, 58 football players were allowed to return to campus in preparation for June 15, the first day voluntary workouts will be permitted. Two of those players tested positive for COVID-19 and will self-isolate for 14 days. Another player was found to have antibodies.
There likely will be more positive tests coming. And although Del Conte believes football games will not only be played in 2020 but played in front of 100 percent capacity with Bevo Blvd. and Longhorn City Limits providing exterior ambiance, he realizes how quickly things can change.
“I tell people, ‘I don’t know; I think ,’ ” Del Conte said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we can plan. And we’ve done that. I’m proud of our response.”