AD White optimistic season will start on time
UCF athletics director Danny White is hopeful the college football season will start on time.
White is optimistic that as the country continues to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, there have been great strides that lead him to believe the Knights could kick off the regular season at home against North Carolina on Sept. 4 with fans in the stands.
“Will everybody be able to play at the start of the season? I don’t know that, but it certainly seems like the state of Florida is in good shape right now from everything I’m reading and hearing. Central Florida is in really good shape,” White said during an interview with the Orlando Sentinel Thursday.
“What do we look like three months from now? Hopefully, we’re in better shape and back to normalcy.
“If we had to play a football season right now, I think we could do that probably with a reduced population in the
stands by following state government guidelines. I think a lot of time is still going to pass. I’m obviously hopeful, but I’m optimistic about it.”
It’s been nearly three months since UCF shuttered its campus, sending students home in response to the virus outbreak. Sports came to a standstill and classes were moved online.
The first step to starting the football season on time is getting the players back on campus.
UCF will start the process June 1 with voluntary on-campus workouts, White said. It is the first day the NCAA is allowing football and basketball players to return to campus for optional individual workouts, with the organization expected to approve the return of athletes in other sports soon.
The Knights have adopted a return to workouts plan with phases. The first wave will include about 60 football players, White said. Incoming freshmen football players and basketball players will arrive later in the month and the rest of UCF’s athletes will be given the option to resume campus workouts in July.
White said his department has been working with Orlando Health and UCF Student Health Services, other schools across the state and schools in the American Athletic Conference to develop safety plans.
“One thing I think our conference has done smartly is to allow individual institutions to make decisions based on their local environment,” he said. “We’re not in the same situation as Temple up in Philadelphia, which is obviously much more of a hot spot. Some of that is because we have a pretty specific geographic spread.
“It feels like our conference is stronger and closer than ever, and I think there’s been a positive byproduct of this virus has been the collegiality — it’s forced people to come together and make decisions. We’re autonomous in allowing each institution to make the best decisions that fit their situation.”
Players who return to campus will go through baseline COVID-19 testing. Then players and coaches will have to pass health screening every time they enter a building on campus, including temperature checks. Everyone will be required to wear a mask and hand sanitizer will be provided.
“We’ve got to be really smart as a population and the good thing for us is that it’s a small population,” White said, adding that the plan is not to bring back a bunch of the staff early in the process. “We’re going to try and keep it as small as possible. Just those that are essential to the student-athletes.”
White and several members of his staff returned to campus this week and experienced the screening process first-hand.
“Every morning, we have a healthcare professional at the building and they do a temperature check and ask me some questions about symptoms and [there is] a hand-sanitizing station when you enter the building,” he said.
White said no matter when the college football season kicks off, fans will play an integral part of the process.
“We are planning to play our opener against North Carolina as if everything is back to normal,” White said. “We’re building contingencies for this scenario and that scenario, but we might be in a position that everything is back to normal and we can have a full stadium, so we have to be ready for that.”
And while some officials have explored playing games without fans in the stands, White sees that as a grave choice.
“I think financially, that’s Armageddon, and it’s an enormous problem for us and for every college football program and every athletic department that plays at the highest level of football because we rely on those revenue sources,” he said. “We can’t absorb that kind of loss.”
White suggested during an interview with Scott Anez on ESPN-580 last week if the college football season couldn’t be played with fans, then officials should consider delaying the start.
“I would hope that before we spring to that conclusion of playing games without fans, we would explore other options,” White told the Sentinel Thursday. “Whether that’s pushing it back a couple of months and thinking about being creative … or even pushing it to the spring, if that’s what it takes to give ourselves every possible opportunity to play college football the way it was intended to be played, then I think we should explore that.”