BYU athletics director Tom Holmoe said on the BYU Sports Network on Monday that there has been “a lot of communications, a lot of conversations with people” regarding the Cougars’ 2020 schedule but did not specifically announce that an agreement with Alabama had been reached.
“You’ve got to look at it this way,” Holmoe said without mentioning UA. “You’ve got to look at it this way. It might take me a year, a year-and-a-half, to put together a schedule normally. When those two conferences, the Big Ten and the Pac-12, announced that they were going to conference (play) only and opened up games, you are talking about not just me, but most of those coaches and athletic directors who had their games cancelled, had to start sprinting.
“So I’ve had a lot of conversations with a number of people. Some have been reported from their side. I think that they’ll continue today and tomorrow and until this goes to the point that we are playing football.”
As Alabama apparently nears completion of the process of finding a replacement for its cancelled opener against USC, Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey said on Monday was that his “inclination” was for SEC teams to play at least one non-conference game this fall if not more.
Appearing on the Dan Patrick radio show, Sankey said coronavirus concerns would ultimately dictate the league schedule but that a “plus-one” model remains on the table for the fall.
“My inclination is not to just run off and play our own football,” Sankey said. “I think our connections are important. Yet, some of that may be dictated by the decisions around COVID and the different circumstances. We’ll try to be patient.”
The SEC teams with traditional in-state ACC rivals — Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and South Carolina — have been strong advocates of maintaining those games if at all possible.
“We’ve been working for months on a (Power 5) protocol to be a common platform so we could know that the guys lined up on the other side of the football have been tested, have gone through screening and are healthy just like our guys on our side of the football,” Sankey said. “I think Georgia Tech can hop on a bus, drive up to Athens, Georgia and play a football game as well as Georgia can get on a plane and fly to Tuscaloosa, (Alabama) and play a football game.”
Reach Cecil Hurt at cecil.hurt@tuscaloosanews.com or via Twitter @cecilhurt
