‘Full steam ahead’ amid the unknown
As the season approaches, Texas and Herman get ready for Sept. 5 opener with safety protocols in place
AUSTIN — Tom Herman felt buoyant Thursday afternoon.
Texas’ fourth official practice had gone well. No mishaps. No new batch of positive tests for COVID-19. No other nasty surprises. Just an hour of work together at Denius Fields and a welcome, if fleeting, feeling of normalcy.
To Texas’ fourth-year coach, it felt like everything was on track only five weeks after the program announced 13 players had confirmed positive test results for COVID-19 and 10 additional studentathletes were required to selfquarantine.
“Our positive numbers have dropped dramatically to the point where, I’m not allowed to say numbers, but almost non-existent at this point,” Herman said during a virtual luncheon hosted by the Touchdown Club of Houston. “We’ve got pretty much our entire team training.
“Then (Friday) we’re cranking up to a 20-hour-a-week period where we’ll have six hours of meetings, eight hours of lifting and running and six hours of walkthrough per week. So we’re full steam ahead.”
Herman’s rosy excitement stands in stark contrast to the situation outside the Longhorns’ gated practice field on Red River Street.
The country is still being ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic. The state of Texas especially has been battered following a phased reopening that began May 1, leaving open the possibility of another shutdown unless key metrics like hospitalizations and ICU capacity, positivity rate and deaths start to stabilize.
But Herman feels confident in the safety protocols and procedures now in place at Texas. Those safeguards, planned and implemented by a committee convened by athletics director Chris Del Conte, have at least appeared effective in preventing a teamwide outbreak and potential suspension of activities.
“Anybody in our program that has tested positive, we have yet to have anybody traced back to a workout,” Herman said. “And we realize that it’s all a pain in the butt. You know, we wear our masks constantly. One person at a rack in the weight room or five yards apart when we run. And even when we do drills now, if it’s a person-versus-person drill, they’ve got masks up and covering the mouth and nose and they get the drill done. They get done, they jog off, they get a sip of water and they go do it again.”
But even the best-laid plans, debated and refined and scrutinized by experts, can be bullrushed and decimated by COVID-19. It just happened at Michigan State, where the entire football team will quarantine or selfisolate for 14 days after a second staff member and one athlete tested positive.
Two weeks off with just a month remaining before the 2020 season is supposed to kick off would be devastating for any team. That time away would be doubly debilitating for a Texas program that hired seven new assistant coaches this offseason and has to plug some holes in the secondary created by transfers.
In order to avoid a temporary shutdown Herman is heaping a great deal of responsibility on a group of over 100 student-athletes currently training for a season that might not even happen.
“It is extremely safe — at least when they’re here now,” Herman said. “What they’re doing the other 20-22 hours a day takes constant education and a commitment level from our players unlike anything we’ve ever asked them to do.
“It’s been quite an adjustment. I’m not gonna sugarcoat that part. And we’re constantly learning, constantly evolving, constantly trying new and better things. But all of it’s been with a smile on our players’ faces and an excitement about getting ready for the season.”
Come Sept. 5, Herman hopes Texas will be staring down South Florida inside a Royal-Memorial Stadium limited to 50 percent capacity. That outcome probably is a little too pie-in-the-sky given how several conferences have already moved to cancel games and rearrange schedules.
The best-case scenario, still being plotted out by the Big 12, is a “plus-one” format with nine conference games and one nonconference matchup. But even that proposal might not save the 2020 college football season.
Herman is quick to say he doesn’t know what’s going to happen with football and the rest of the NCAA’s fall sports. All he and the Longhorns can do until a decision is made is follow best practices and act like the 2020 season isn’t on life support.
“I get asked that question probably by my wife, my mom, by everybody in my life,” Herman said. “And the simple fact is, I don’t know. The good thing is there are people that are much, much more educated in all of this than I am that are making these decisions. So right now our marching orders are to prepare as if we kick the ball on September 5, and we’re going to do that to the best of our ability until they tell us to pivot.”