Welcome to 2020! Oklahoma State and Tulsa Postponed to Sept. 19
STILLWATER — Oklahoma State will have to wait until Sept. 19 to open their season with Tulsa after Tulsa asked for a delay.
There were rumblings Sunday morning that Tulsa needed to stop practicing last week for a couple of days and that the game between the turnpike rivals was possibly going to be postponed as a result. Several checks revealed University of Tulsa athletic department officials were saying everything was fine and that their team was back at practice and would be good to go for Saturday, Sept. 5. Another source said Tulsa paused practice the previous week for testing protocols. On Monday, the University of Tulsa sent out this release, postponing the game a week.
"In attempting to deal with COVID-19 protocols effectively, the Tulsa football team has been limited in practice sessions since the beginning of preseason camp on August 7. Tulsa had a nine-day pause due to multiple positive tests and was limited to seven practices in the 17 days of preseason camp.
"The safety and health of our student-athletes is always at the core of all of our discussions and decisions. Without time to properly prepare physically we would be putting our student-athletes at a greater risk of injury," said Dr. Derrick Gragg, Tulsa's vice president & director of athletics. "An open date for both schools presented us with the opportunity to reschedule the game for a week later. I'm appreciative of Mike Holder and Oklahoma State University for their cooperation in coming to this decision."
Tulsa announced the pause for practice back in August with a school release.
Eight Tulsa football student-athletes tested positive for the COVID-19 virus and were placed in isolation until medically cleared to resume normal activities. The impacted students were asymptomatic and none required hospitalization.
Eight additional football student-athletes that came into direct contact with those positive cases had to quarantine for the required 14 days.
"It's unfortunate that we have to pause practice, but the well-being, health and security of our athletes is our number one priority," Tulsa head coach Philip Montgomery said at the time. "We will continue to do everything we can during this stretch to keep our players safe, and at the top of their game mentally."
Oklahoma State head football coach Mike Gundy was at his youngest son's junior varsity high school game on Monday night in Edmond as Stillwater downed Santa Fe 14-6. Gundy sounded as if he was okay with the postponement and was just going with the flow.
"I don't know, I'm guessing the postponement had something to do with COVID," Gundy said. "We were ready and tested Sunday with no positives. We don't really have a choice (with the postponement)."
Interestingly, we had that heads up, but couldn't confirm. Finding out about this earlier, Oklahoma State might have had a chance to contact SMU and see if the Mustangs wanted to play this coming Saturday. This is what the headline "Welcome to 2020!" means. You could be looking for a game on any given Saturday this season.
The game with Tulsa had been scheduled for a 6:30 kickoff and was going to be televised on ESPN or ESPNU. This game becomes the second Big 12 game to be postponed in Week 1. SMU at TCU was postponed and was to be played Friday, Sept. 11. That game was moved because of positive COVID-19 tests at TCU causing them to shut down practice. There is no makeup game announced as of yet for the Mustangs and Horned Frogs.
Oklahoma State's game with Tulsa could certainly be moved to a different kickoff time and with no other Big 12 games scheduled for that Saturday, FOX is wide open and likely to pick that game up instead of ESPN.
