Boyle: "We have to look at each sport and any season a little differently"
On Wednesday, we heard from men's basketball head coach Tad Boyle, as he, AD Rick George, Karl Dorrell plus Danny Sanchez, Jesse Mahoney and JR Payne joined reporters to discuss the Pac-12's Tuesday decision to postpone all fall sports competition through the end of the calendar year.
Boyle was short and to the point when asked for his initial reaction.
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"Shock and disbelief," he said.
Boyle admitted that the thought of playing a conference-only schedule that would commence later in the fall was a possibility that he and his assistant coaches had been aware of.
However, the timing and one-size-fits-all blanket decision by the Pac-12 to postpone all sports competitions through the New Year he found puzzling.
"I was preparing myself and certainly our staff, we had talked about, the possibility of doing a conference-only schedule starting in January — that part doesn’t surprise me, even though we haven’t made that decision yet," Boyle said. "I was anticipating something like that but I don’t understand why we made the decision when we made the decision — look, if that decision has to be made sometime in September or October, I get it. I don’t understand why it was made in August.”
In particular, the inherent differences between football, basketball and other sports in which contact is far less prevalent and/or a part of the game was another item Boyle touched on.
"Basketball and football are different sports," he said. "Football and lacrosse are different sports. Lacrosse and soccer are different sports. Golf and tennis are different sports and so, if we’re truly committed to our student-athletes, I think we have to look at each sport and any season a little differently. I’m taking a look at the NCAA rulebook — I’m getting ready to take the NCAA rules test tomorrow — the rulebook specifically makes different rules for different spots and different calendars for different sports.""I don’t know why basketball was put into this (postponement decision) and again, I shake my head, but it was, and we'll deal with it."
Since June 7, when the vast majority of Colorado's scholarship players returned to Boulder for summer workouts, there has not been a single positive case for COVID among the team as well as coaches and staff.
That, coupled with Colorado and the Pac-12's decision to switch to online classes following the Thanksgiving break seemed to be two positives that would support consideration for basketball to be spared from the blanket postponement of all sports.
"With every Pac-12 school basically doing online learning after the week of Thanksgiving, there is about a 4-6 week time on the calendar where college campuses in the Pac-12 are going to be the safest place out student-athletes can be, in terms of basketball," Boyle said. "Everybody else goes home — so we’re all by ourselves."
"Our players have been on campus this summer, 11 of our 13 scholarship players have been here since June 7. We’ve had zero issues from June 7 through today and we’ve been tested multiple times, players and staff."
In other words, a potentially promising opportunity to play safe basketball this fall has now been prematurely eliminated as a possibility.
"I believe that Thanksgiving through Christmas — which is normally a time we're playing basketball anyway — that it could have been played. But that option now is off the table," Boyle said.
As for the road ahead, Boyle said the Buffs will try to make this fall as akin to what it would be during a regular season, but with some necessary changes here and there to account for four and a half months before the earliest the team will prospectively be able to compete agin.
"In terms of how we’ll deal with it, we’re moving forward," he said. "We’ll have our normal fall — we may tweak it a little bit, knowing that we won’t play until January."