Lon Kruger: Fall or Spring, Bring on Football
Oklahoma coach Lon Kruger would be perfectly OK with trying to play basketball at the same time Lincoln Riley and his team are trying to play football.
“We need football. We need revenue from football,” Kruger said Friday during a Zoom video call with media. “We need those guys to have those opportunities to compete. However we have to do it is great.”
As news from the Coronavirus pandemic has evolved on a weekly and even daily basis, playing college football in the spring has become more and more likely reality. Major conferences are working through numerous models, and currently the one getting the most attention is a conference-only slate with the addition of one non-conference game.
The Big 12 Conference and the SEC have held firm to the hope of playing a 12-game schedule, but moving even part of the season to spring could affect that. There is the 2021 season players, coaches and programs must prepare for, and pushing the season into the spring and then trying to play 12 games would make for a dangerously short offseason.
The thought of trying to find a college basketball game on TV next spring is daunting if football games are being staged on the same Saturdays.
“Yeah, if it does go to spring, whatever we have to do is great,” Kruger said. “We just hope that young guys and gals in college have a chance to compete, and whatever we have to do to do that safely and give them that opportunity, we’re good with it. We’re not going to (squabble) over spring TV by any means.
“If we do it all in the spring, it’ll certainly be a crowded TV calendar, that’s for sure. But that’s fine. We’ll live with it and make whatever works, we’ll make it work.”
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