Gundy Tentatively Planning for May 1 Start, Willing to Play Games with No Fans

The COVID-19 pandemic brought spring football to a halt, but Mike Gundy is hoping to get his guys back as early as next month.

In a teleconference Tuesday, Gundy said the program has a plan to get started May 1. That could obviously get moved back, but that’s the plan for now. Gundy said the plan is to test the football staff for COVID-19 and get them back to work May 1 with the players not too far behind.

“How fast that can happen based on the tests that are available, I can’t say right now, but that’s the plan,” Gundy said. “We have to have a plan, and the plan right now is for them to start on May 1. It might get backed up two weeks. I don’t know, I can’t make that call, but if it does, we’ll start with the employees of this company, the ones that come in this building. Then we’ll bring the players in, and slowly but surely we’ll test them all in.”

As of Tuesday, Oklahoma has 1,472 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health, and 67 Oklahomans have died from the virus. There are 24 confirmed cases in Payne County with no deaths. Most of the OSU football players have left the city during the shutdown.

Stillwater has a shelter-in-place order in place until April 16. Tulsa and Oklahoma City have orders in places until April 30.

As a country, America has nearly 400,000 confirmed cases with more than 12,000 deaths.

Gundy said if someone in his organization were to test positive for COVID-19 that person would be quarantined similar to those who catch the flu.

“We get people that get the flu during the season, we quarantine them, we treat them, we make sure they’re healthy, we bring them back,” Gundy said. “It would be the same thing here, but at some point, we’ve got to go back to work. We’ve got to get these guys back in here.”

Gundy also spoke on the idea of playing games with empty stadiums. He said he didn’t think it would come to that, but it is something he would be willing to do.

He made multiple references to college football’s impact on the local economy and the importance of getting things going again.

“The majority of people in this building who are healthy,” Gundy said, “… and certainly the 18-, 19-, 20-, 21-, 22-year-olds that are healthy, the so-called medical people saying the herd of healthy people that have the antibodies may be built up and can fight this? We all need to go back to work.”