Yahoo Finance 9 Oklahoma football players test positive for COVID-19 after break from practice
Oklahoma football coach Lincoln Riley announced on Saturday that nine players on the team tested positive for COVID-19.
The positive results were from tests conducted Saturday after the team took some days off of practice. Riley told reporters that 75 percent of the team remained in Norman during the break and classified the cases as “community-based infections.”
The outbreak arrives as the Big 12 plans to move forward with its season this fall. Riley touted Oklahoma’s football activities as taking place in a “very very safe environment” and attributed the outbreak to players being away from facilities.
‘They’ve been community-based infections’
As @NicoleAuerbach has pointed out, Lincoln Riley never said they have traced the 9 new positive cases to players that went home. He did say all 9 were community based infections & 75% of the team stayed in Norman. pic.twitter.com/MarxwTsOES
— Eddie Radosevich (@Eddie_Rado) August 15, 2020
“The area that our team has got to do a better job on is when we’re not here,” Riley said “We’ve known forever that that was gonna be the major concern. We’ve been able to track back every one of these positives, and they’ve been community-based infections.”
Big 12’s reasoning for football season
Oklahoma’s positive tests arrive amid a debate over whether college football should move forward in the fall and how best to protect student-athletes if it does. The Big 12 released a schedule and committed on Wednesday to conducting its season.
The Big 12’s announcement arrived as the Big Ten and Pac-12 postponed their fall sports schedules, football included. The ACC and SEC are also moving forward with their football seasons. For now, at least.
In defending the decision to move forward, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby argued that he knows more about COVID-19 safety than the media.
“For the most part I have better information and my presidents have better information than most of our friends in the fourth estate,” Bowlsby told reporters on Wednesday. “Reasonable people can disagree on it. The Pac-12 and the Big Ten are seeing much of the same information that we're seeing. But our board believes in our scientists and has come to a conclusion that is different and so have the leadership of the SEC and the ACC.”
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