Sooners' game at WVU Saturday is postponed
Oklahoma has been a college football paragon for handling COVID-19, and has been fortunate to get all its games in so far.
But even the Sooners are not immune to the scourge of the novel Coronavirus.
OU’s game Saturday at West Virginia has been postponed, the school announced Wednesday via the OU Twitter account. The game is scheduled to be made up on Dec. 12.
An OU spokesman announced in a press release that OU football has temporarily paused organized team activities due to recent positive COVID-19 tests and contact tracing.
The OU basketball team announced earlier Wednesday that it was postponing two games this week for the same reason, including Wednesday night's season opener against UTSA.
Per Big 12 policy, football teams can postponed games if they are unable to fulfill the league's predetermined minimum participation thresholds of 53 total players, seven offensive linemen, four defensive linemen and one quarterback.
Coach Lincoln Riley said Saturday night after beating Oklahoma State 41-13 that the Sooners were close to postponing the Bedlam matchup but were able to get the game played.
Riley said on Tuesday that OU has played games this season where they could have canceled.
"Couple of those early games this year, we could have not played," Riley said. "You could maybe come back at the end of this year and say, 'You know what, maybe a result of one of those games would have been different had we not done it.'
"But I just think the message that sends to your team, and here at OU, nothing to do with me, but all the great players and coaches herein the past. This has been about competitiveness and edge and toughness. I don’t know. If you can play, and all of a sudden you pull it, I just don’t know that you’re really embracing kind of what this place has always been about and what’s made this program special for years and years and years.
"Who knows? I’m not saying we won’t get to a point where it’s not safe for us to play a game this year. I don’t know. We have been close. But if we feel like we can play and play safely, then we’re going to play. We decided it was going to be like that from the beginning, and we were going to ride with it no matter what. And we have done that."
The Sooners are 6-2 and riding a five-game winning streak, while WVU is 5-3 on the season. OU is No. 11 in this week’s College Football Playoff rankings.
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