Report: Missouri State COVID-free, but ‘Oklahoma cannot say the same thing’
Missouri State’s football team was tested Friday and is COVID-free, but “Oklahoma cannot say the same thing,” according to MSU’s president.
Per a report in Friday’s Springfield News-Leader, university president Clif Smart told the school’s board of governors that Saturday’s season-opener between the Bears and Sooners was, at one point, in serious jeopardy.
As photos of the team bus in Oklahoma were circulated on social media Friday, News-Leader reporter Wyatt Wheeler wrote that Smart said all 72 members of MSU’s travel party had returned zero positive COVID-19 tests and that the team was on the road to Norman.
“Oklahoma cannot say the same thing,” Smart told the newspaper. “The game was in serious jeopardy until we got final test results this morning and I better not say anything else because I don’t know who’s listening.”
Numerous message boards that follow Oklahoma indicated several OU players had either tested positive or would be quarantined after contact tracing determined potential exposure. An OU source said later Friday that the game being played was never actually in doubt.
While OU needs a home game and whatever revenue comes with seating capacity reduced to 25 percent, Missouri State is counting on the $600,000 payday from the Sooners.
The schools agreed this summer that OU would conduct all of Missouri State’s COVID testing. Sooner athletic director Joe Castiglione said on Toby Rowland’s morning show on KREF that OU has spent “north of $430,000 on testing and PPE” over the course of this offseason and preseason.
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