A week ago today the University of Hawaii joined the Mountain West Conference in exulting that football was back, scheduled to not only resume with an eight-game season but aggressively kick off with a quick, Oct. 24 turnaround slate of games.
A day later it was left to the commissioner, Craig Thompson, to interject a dose of reasoned reality.
“I would fully anticipate that not all 12 institutions in the Mountain West will play eight games for various reasons, just based on what we’ve seen in the first three weeks of this season,” Thompson said in a media conference call.
On Wednesday, the first day UH had just begun practicing in pads, the Rainbow Warriors got hit with their own in-your-face mask reality in the form of four positive COVID-19 results from Tuesday’s tests.
Those results, the first batch back from a total of 140 tests the school said it administered, caused UH to announce a temporary cessation of all team-related activities in the lower campus athletic complex, a blanket covering athletes of five sports on campus as well as employees who have contact with them.
Not exactly an auspicious start for the hopes of teeing it up for a fast-arriving season opener three weeks hence. But, a pointed reminder that when — and if — this truncated season finally gets off the ground it will be one measured in the challenge of thrice weekly tests before it even gets to the stadium.
Nationally, through the first weeks of the season nearly 20% of games have either been postponed or canceled. This week two games have already been postponed and four leagues have yet to play.
Meanwhile, it is so early in the Mountain West’s process that the conference still doesn’t have a football schedule yet and might not for several days.
Nor has the conference announced a list of thresholds for play. For example, how many positive tests would force cancellation of a game? How many available linemen or quarterbacks must a team have in order to play?
Like UH, for the moment most of the other 11 teams in the conference are just trying to stay healthy enough to get in the requisite number of practices to be in something approaching what would be considered football-ready condition. Coaches have said they need 29 days, the equivalent of a regular fall camp in pre-pandemic days, to sufficiently prepare for the start of their seasons.
The Pac-12 and Mid-American conferences, which joined the MWC in announcing belated resumptions of football last week, at least built in some lead time and flexibility. Their plans call for fewer games and a return to competition the first week of November.
In the MWC, the choice was to be more aggressive in pursuit of a schedule. The MWC is trying to play eight games in an eight-week window before the conference championship game that affords no options for the make up of postponed games.
It does, however, give the conference its best running start at trying to fulfill the obligations of its new six-year, $270 million TV contract that requires the MWC deliver nearly 40 games a season to its partners, CBS and Fox.
Everybody playing a full eight-game schedule would be nice, if problematic, but everybody getting a substantial paycheck might be the MWC’s overarching goal.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
