Lovie Smith Remains "Optimistic" College Football Can Be Played In 2020

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Lovie Smith says it is in his nature to be an optimistic person so his answer to the topic of whether a 2020 college football season will occur is guided by a level of hope.

“If you know me a little bit, my glass is always half full so I’m optimistic with that,” Smith said in a media teleconference on March 27.

However, that optimism from Smith’s personality doesn’t mean he’s ignoring the obvious roadblocks to projecting an upcoming sports calendar during the current worldwide COVID-19 health epidemic. Smith, who has two family members including his daughter working in the healthcare industry, says he recognizes that what the country and world leaders are dealing with is much more important than sporting events and that includes the idea of starting preseason college football practices in August.

“How I live is about going on facts and the difference between perception and reality,” Smith said. “Part of my daily routine is watching the news in order to listen to the experts tell us. From there, we need to be ready for whatever comes our way is what we’re trying to deal with. I don’t think you can do anything else other than that. To me, the reality is we’re obviously not going to go through spring football. School isn’t in session on campus here. From there, I assume we’re going to eventually play football again one day.”

Smith says he’s in constant contact with his boss, athletics director Josh Whitman, about the ever-changing calendar but the 61-year-old Illini coach is going back to his past experience as an assistant in college football during the 1980s and early 1990s and his NFL background to develop a sped-up version of preseason practices.

“I come from an NFL background where you don’t have spring practices (and) you don’t do much physical contact, if any at all, during the summer and you have a training camp to get ready for the season and then you get ready for the games each week,” Smith said. “I don’t know if increasing the amount of (preseason practice) time is the answer. As long as our athletes find a way to stay in good condition, I think you can work and adjust everything else to put on a good product and get everybody ready eventually when that day comes. I’ve seen it happen in the past. I’ve seen guys miss a majority of the spring workouts and the summer workouts and still have outstanding seasons.”

For Smith and his staff at Illinois, which includes two new assistant coach hires at the defensive line spots in Jimmy Lindsey and Al Davis, the constant adaptation to this evolving COVID-19 health crisis is just part of the job description.

Over the last few weeks the college football world has seen coaches and analysts give their take on when preseason practice would be safe to start in order for the season to start on time. ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit said he’d be surprised if the 2020 college football or NFL seasons started on time or happened at all. Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy gave a bizarre 20-minute opening statement in his media teleconference that included his desire to come up with a plan for the employees in the OSU football facility and OSU players to return by May 1.

“I think it would be great if we lived in a world where we could get those definite dates but that’s just not where we are right now,” Smith said. “In an ideal world, our guys will be back on campus for summer workouts but if that doesn’t happen, whenever we can get them back is fine. In an ideal world, we’d like to go through a normal training camp but if that doesn’t happen, we’ll adjust. We’ll be ready whenever it is we are told it is safe to turn the lights back on, go back to work but in the meantime, we’re going to do what we can to help stop the spread of the disease and everything else is just speculation and I don’t really deal much with that.”

When asked if there’s a final date in the summer to start preseason camp where it would be safe to start the 2020 season on time, Smith said he’s deciding to focus on being ready if and when that date comes instead of projecting a future date.

“I’m not trying to run away from your question but (my answer is) as soon as possible but whenever it happens, it happens. Right now, you have to take that approach. As a coach, you go into every game with an ideal game plan. It never goes that way. It is always about adjustments as a coach. As we went into this situation, I knew we would have to be making pretty much daily adjustments. Right now, we’re living day to day and try to have a week’s plan and then adjust along the way.”