David Cutcliffe: We Can Have Football Before Students Return to Campus

Coach will know more after this week's coaches meetings

One hurdle that may be in front of football’s return is the fact that many colleges may not return to on-campus activities by fall. Is it possible to have football practices and games if there are no other students on campus? Duke coach David Cutcliffe thinks so.

“This is an opinion, and I’m a coach, so you know where a coach is going to lean,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any question we could, because we can control that environment. You can’t control the environment of thousands and thousands of people. So we’re not talking about thousands of people. We would have a much smaller environment to create safety for those people involved. I could see it happen without people in the stands. That’s not ideal. It would be very odd, but remember, we practice and scrimmage all the time without people in the stands I still think being able to have a season, and you’re really talking about worst case scenarios, potentially, but those are scenarios that have to be talked about—not rejecting any thoughts right now. I don’t think we should. Again, I think like everything else, if we have a positive attitude about our approach... I’ll know more next week, because I’ll be in more extensive meetings in the worlds of AFCA (American Football Coaches Association) with some NCAA people and our board meetings. I just don’t want people to go in with a closed mind. I don’t like getting to worst case scenarios like anyone else, but we’ve got to talk about them. We’ve got to cover from best case to worst case. I’m open to any of that. Do I think with the medical community involved in athletics—I think we’ve got a great opportunity to control an environment for young people. I wouldn’t even consider that and look their parents in the eye if I didn’t think those young people would be safe. But you have to do that model from team to team to team, because you’re obviously going to have contact on the field. So it’s got to be a very disciplined, detailed model to bring anyone back to any environment where we’ve got one institution competing against another institution. There’s going to have to be some tests and verification that you’ve got a healthy team on the field, I would imagine.”