Mountain West To Resume Play On Oct. 24?
Reports have football back before Pac-12?
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MW football to return soon?
The Mountain West could return to the football field at the same weekend as the Big Ten, according to Bruce Feldman.
"They're optimistic that they could start their season on October 24"@BruceFeldmanCFB has the latest surrounding the @pac12 on #BigNoonKickoffpic.twitter.com/pwt8h7rGbs
— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) September 19, 2020
The Mountain West athletic directors are meeting on this upcoming Monday to create a pitch to the board which is to meet later next week.
The Oct. 24 date is ambitious since Fresno State has yet to be on campus for any activities and is just now making a plan to possibly return. This would be a swift return as that date is five weeks away and typically teams would need six weeks to prepare for the season.
Some Mountain West schools have been doing the 12-hour a week allotted workouts but Fresno State has not had anyone — including athletes — on campus and San Diego State had to shut down everything on campus for two weeks.
The Bulldogs president, Joseph Castro released a statement about getting closer to having student-athletes return to campus but there was no specific date.
A statement from @JosephICastro pic.twitter.com/cJ7FmvBIRF
— Fresno State Bulldogs (@FSAthletics) September 18, 2020
Wyoming president Ed Seidel also spoke out with encouraging words about the possibility of Mountain West football returning and following the Big Ten as they are returning.
Update…..exciting and we will keep grinding! pic.twitter.com/nyTJ2Ems4V
— Tom Burman (@TomBurman1) September 17, 2020
Nevada athletics director Doug Knuth is also optimistic that football will return and in an open letter, has hope that fans can attend Wolf Pack events.
As we plan for a return to competition, we are also hopeful that we can do so with fans in attendance. We will continue to work to establish safety protocols in accordance with regulations from local and state health agencies to determine if we can accommodate fans in our venues and at what capacity. No decisions have been made at this time, and capacity size could be something that changes and evolves during the course of the season.
How realistic is that Mountain West returns and what will it take? Nevada Sports Net spoke to Dr. Mark Stovak who is on the NCAA’s new 16-person COVID-19 Medical Advisory Group. He explained what the Mountain West needs in terms of testing to get back on the field, and it does not have to be every single day.
“You have to be able to get testing for all the schools that are going to be playing on a regular basis,” Stovak said. “How often you have to test? First, it depends on what your test is and how accurate it is and how fast you can turn it around. I don’t think every single university and every community has to test every day, but they have to test frequently enough that they’re not allowing positives to be missed several times because you get a false negative result.
“And they have to be able to turn around those tests fast enough that if you have somebody who is positive they don’t walk around out in the community and in the bubble for three or four days for their test to come back.”
That seems like a smart approach to test a few times a week so that the overwhelming majority of positive tests are found and contact tracing can be done to make sure others do not get sick.
If the Mountain West has access to daily and rapid testing, then every day would be a good idea since those tests are accurate and inexpensive.
All signs point toward the Mountain West getting back to the football field this fall at some point.
