Vince Tyra believes Louisville has a "tight window" to start football on time
In recent days, optimism has started to turn to skepticism surrounding the upcoming 2020 college football season because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Just in the last week alone, both the Big Ten & Pac-12 conferences announced that they would be moving to a conference-only schedule in 2020, with the Ivy League postponing upcoming fall sports altogether.
The Atlantic Coast Conference hasn't quite decided to make such a move yet, but the writing on the wall indicates it could made in the near future. Last week, the conference announced that each of its fall Olympic Sports will delay the start of competition until at least September 1 and that a decision to follow the Big Ten & Pac-12's lead regarding conference-only scheduling won't be made until "late July".
Louisville Athletic Director Vince Tyra feels that postponing a potential decision to go conference-only as opposed to going ahead and pulling the trigger was "appropriate" and that it gives campuses in the conference time to acclimate. Louisville is currently scheduled to start classes on August 17.
"The end of the month is more of a time frame for us to come out with anything that I would say formal," he said to reporters in a teleconference Wednesday. "As you can probably guess, we'll adjust if we have to."
The Cardinals are currently scheduled to begin the 2020 season at home on Wednesday, Sept. 2 against the NC State Wolfpack. However if attempts to limit the spread of the coronavirus by conference members (including Louisville) fall short, Tyra believes that alterations of the 2020 football schedule are inevitable.
"I think your plan is set for if things are in control. If things are in a stable environment. If they're not, I don't foresee us kicking off," he said. "I think in my mind the plans we are putting in place and thinking about are pretty responsible and thoughtful, but those are under what I would deem more stable conditions. If they're not stable, then I think you are going to see delays."
Louisville is currently in phase three of their plan to return student-athletes to campus. The first phase of the plan went off without a hitch, with the only hiccup thus far being two members of the men's basketball program testing positive. Voluntary workouts were suspended for two weeks as a result. The football program is currently not divulging testing numbers.
Controlling the spread of the virus might be going over relatively smoothly on Louisville's campus and in Jefferson Co. for the time being, but Tyra is worried about the eventual return of students back to campus and what effect that will have. He also notes that conference-wide efforts towards a contingency plan are made harder due to spiking coronavirus numbers across several regions that house ACC members.
"The conference spans 10 states. Even if we were to follow the Big 10 methodology, we're in multiple states. You certainly see what's going on in Miami, Florida, Boston. We've got some hotspots where we have some of our ACC members, so that makes things difficult," he said.
Tyra also notes that adding to the complexity is that the program is "spoiled with the luxury of UofL Health". He specifically notes how Louisville can get test results back within hours, whereas some schools in the Carolinas struggled with the turnaround time of the test results. Combining all the aforementioned factors, and he believes it will be close call on if the season will start on time.
"We're creating minimum medical standards for all those to compete. Those things have to sort themselves out," he said. "We do have a tight window to get there for September 2nd vs. North Carolina State."
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