Here's what Colorado athletic director Rick George had to say yesterday during his first teleconference with reporters following the Pac-12's postponement of all fall sports competitions through Jan. 1, 2021.
George on the logistics of playing football in the spring:
“Obviously, we wouldn’t have said we were postponing (the fall season) if we didn’t think we could play in the spring. Will it be challenging? Yes. We’ve got two internal working groups in our conference: one’s a student-athlete football working group and one that has some administrators on it from around the league. They’ve been working really hard on that and what that would look like. Certainly, there will be some challenges but we wouldn’t have postponed it if we didn’t think we could play in the spring. How we will do that is yet to be determined, but we’ve got good people working on it.”
George shares his thoughts on the prospects of the Pac-12 and Big Ten opting out while the ACC, SEC and Big 12 prospectively opts in for the fall:
“We have to make our decision based on the information we have. In my opinion, we have the best medical advisory group in the country and I can say that unequivocally because I think they’ve given us great guidance and great direction since the pandemic hit. They’ve worked hours and hours gathering data and a lot of information and we were moving at a point where we were going to play."
"I have incredible confidence in that group and when they advise us that they’re not ready to endorse us playing a contact sport, then it was time for us to pause. We wanted to get some time for our student-athletes. Our conference has done a really good job with Larry (Scott’s) leadership, the rest of the team and Ray Anderson. With our presidents and CEOs, we know their priorities to help the safety of our student-athletes and ours is, too. Everybody’s got their different groups that they are listening to and whatever decisions those other conferences make, they’ll have to make."
“I’ve said this before, but somehow, we’ve got to get (college) football together nationally, where we’re speaking from one voice and we have one direction. I’m not being critical of anybody — I’m just telling you that we need to do that. I certainly understand and respect whatever the decisions the other leagues make. I hope they respect ours because we did it with a lot of thought and consideration.”
George on basketball factoring into the Pac-12's blanket postponement:
“Certainly, when you’re talking about fall — and we made the decision to start on January 1 — we’re having those discussions internally within our conference with the NCAA...with the information that we have and our ability to tests and with some of the prevalence with infection in our communities, it’s just smart for us to look at different options and that’s why we made the decision we made. Basketball is certainly a big part of that moving forward and we’ll have that discussion in the coming days.”
George on the feasibility of an NBA or NHL-like bubble in college athletics:
“We looked at this with all sports in the fall. This isn’t just a football issue — I want to be very clear about that. Our soccer ladies want to play just as much as football does and they’ve put in an incredible amount of time, just like our women’s volleyball team and out cross country team. This wasn’t a football-only decision."
"The bubble is not realistic in college athletics. It’s very difficult to do and we’ve got students coming back on campus next week. Our students are young people — we can’t put them in a hotel like the NBA does down in Orlando. We have to be thoughtful of that as we’re making these decisions and so with campus starting and more people coming (back), some of the medical experts had said that students coming back on campus and classes resume that the infection rate may go up. You have to take all of those factors into consideration into account and we certainly have. Putting them in a bubble is not realistic in college athletics."
"In the NFL, they test every day — that’s not realistic for us. We don’t have those kinds of resources. Doing a cardio MRI on every student-athlete, is that realistic? We’re much different from the pro leagues; they have no fans, they’ve ben very careful but we’ve already seen some trip ups in certain sports with COVID impacting some teams’ abilities to compete. There’s never a 100% guarantee, but we want to make sure the risk is very, very minimal for us to begin.”
George on the financial implications of no fall sports seasons:
“I’ve been pretty consistent on this but No. 1, we are not cutting sports for our student athletes and No. 2, we’re not cutting anything that impacts the experience for our student-athletes. All the support areas that I mentioned: health, nutrition, academics, leadership — all those areas — we will not touch. We have an obligation to provide a great experience for our student-athletes and we’re not going to look at any of those areas. But we do have some challenges and will there be furloughs and layoffs? Probably."
"My leadership team and I have been working on that for awhile now but we’ve really ramped it up over the last few days and we’ll make some decisions in the next 7-10 days o what that will look like, so that’s going to be tough and it’s gut-wrenching because it does impact people. But we won’t eliminate any sports. We’ll have to look at layoffs and furloughs.”
RELATED: Karl Dorrell reacts to the Pac-12 postponing all fall sports competitions
Join the conversation on Rick George's comments at Buff Nation, the premiere message board community serving countless CU fanatics.
George weighs in on the Pac-12 potentially looking at obtaining a sizable loan — just south of $1B — to help its schools financially due to no sports revenues coming in this fall (reported by Jon Wilner at the San Jose Mercury News:)
“We’re looking at all that and working with campus leadership on that to look at ‘do we need support, and if we do, what’s the right mechanism for us?’ but we will certainly look at that once we finalize our direction, where we’re going and where we can get to. We budgeted for a season knowing that we weren’t going to put a lot of fans in the stadium, so we knew that and we already made those budget cuts, so if and when — I’ll say when — the money and revenue will be the same it was when we go unless we trim the number of games we play. We budgeted based on a 10-game schedule with very little fans, so we’ve already made that."
"The challenge to balance with playing in the spring is, ‘are we going to play 10 games?’ and I guess that’s still, to be decided. The impacts revenue-wise, we’re already seeing those and we’re already budgeted for those. By moving things to the spring, we’re still going to play those contests and still have some of the revenue that’s coming in that we already budgeted for. That’s part of the challenge we’re looking at with our budget moving forward.”
George on the Pac-12 player unity group and its demands:
“The one thing I will say is that we’ve always told our student-athletes that you have a voice. I know our conference with Larry and some of other other ADs are having discussions with them. What I will tell you is that what we’re doing for our student-athletes is amazing in my opinion."
"I’m a former student-athlete and I know a lot of things have changed since I played, but what we’ve done for student-athletes — and I’ll just speak about Colorado — we didn't have a nutrition department three or four years ago. Now we’re spending a million and a half (per year) on nutrition. We had one clinical psychologist as part of our psychological health performance department. Now we’ve got five. We’ve got four clinical psychologists working with our student-athletes that are in athletics. We’ve done full cost of attendance — we've made incredible strides in what we’re providing tutors and we just had our best academics we’ve ever had this past spring."
"And so, the things that we’re providing our student-athletes, you talk about health and safety and we talk about mental health — that’s as big of an issue as any and we’ve addressed it. The things that we provide our student-athletes I think are best in show and we work hard every day. That’s why I’ve said we’re not cutting any of those areas. I think it’s important for everybody to know that the areas that are really important to us as we move forward are those areas that support our student-athletes. I think we do a great job in that regard.”
George on his concerns moving ahead with respect to Colorado's financials:
“Well certainly I’m concerned with the financial aspects but I’ll go back to what I said earlier when I said we already budgeted for very little fans and a 10-game schedule. Now, we take that and we move it to the spring, those revenue projections probably don’t change. The only way they change is if we don’t play the amount of games (in the spring) that we’re currently budgeted for.” Again — we don’t know what that’ll look like moving forward but we’ve got great groups working on it.”
What can teams do in the fall in terms of meetings and workouts?
“What they’ll look like is what they usually look like, because they’re still technically in-season. Our fall sports will be doing the things that they have now. We probably won’t have any training camp like we’ve done before, but we’ll still have our (quota) of hours that we’re allowed by the NCAA that allows our coaches to interact with our student-athletes and I think that’s really important. One of the things I know we all agree on, with my peers in the Pac-12 is, our coaches need to have communication and be able to work with their student-athletes."
"Obviously, we’re not playing, but they need to have that interaction so we’re going to continue to push really hard in that regard for them to be able to have meetings and interactions and engagement. Our student-athletes want that, they need that, and we’re going to push hard to make sure that happens.”
George on the possibility of a Spring Game-esque scrimmage being played in the fall:
”Potentially. Look, spring ball in the fall makes sense. Who knows. What we’ve said is that we’re not going to have competitions until January 1. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t do something like (a scrimmage) if it met the conditions.”
