The coronavirus has cast doubt on the college football season, and no one is doing more contingency planning than Gary Stokan, who is planning three of the season's first three games.
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00:00 This year you're doing three in eight days, which is the biggest you've ever bitten off.
00:05 It's probably looking back, not the best years to try that, huh?
00:08 >> Yeah, my staff thought I was nuts scheduling three games in a week,
00:12 which is, as you said, never been done in college football history in 151 years.
00:18 And then to have COVID-19 hit on top of it,
00:23 it's led itself to some interesting work.
00:27 Obviously, to put it in perspective, we're happy to have the challenge.
00:31 There are a lot of people suffering from deaths and loss of life,
00:35 loss of business, and loss of jobs.
00:38 So just to keep it in perspective,
00:40 we're happy to have the challenge we have to put on these games.
00:45 >> So what extra are you doing?
00:49 What's gonna change because of the pandemic?
00:53 >> Well, our contingencies have contingencies.
00:57 We have modeled different scenarios, put in different protocols,
01:02 deleted some things that we ordinarily would do.
01:06 So there's a bunch of things, obviously, the tickets and
01:10 the budget, there's implications there.
01:15 There's implications as to what the field will look like with respect to people
01:21 on the field and how people enter the stadium.
01:24 So we've modeled different capacities of 25, 30, and
01:29 50%, which has trickle down ramifications to the budget and then the payouts.
01:35 There's increased costs of potentially masks for everybody that attends the game.
01:43 So yeah, there's a myriad of things, and
01:46 all with the hope that in late July, the Big 12, ACC and
01:51 SEC decide to play more than just conference games.
01:55 Because if they decide to play just conference games, then all that work is for
01:59 naught because we won't be able to put on the Chick-fil-A kickoff games.
02:04 >> Right, and I mean, you're less than two months out at this point, and
02:09 it sounds like there's just so much that you still don't know.
02:13 When do those decisions have to be made?
02:16 >> Well, from what our conversations with the conference offices have been,
02:21 they're gonna come out with a statement in July, the end of July.
02:26 And it'll either be what the schedule will look like,
02:30 or they could potentially push the season back.
02:34 We just don't know.
02:37 So we'll wait until the end of July.
02:39 In the meantime, and running in parallel,
02:41 we're meeting with Mercedes-Benz Stadium next week to go over all the protocols
02:46 that we would have for the game, should we be allowed to play it.
02:52 And then what are the dates of the games?
02:54 Are they going to play conference plus one or
02:58 conference plus two with a full schedule?
03:01 And are they gonna push back to October or later?
03:05 Or are they gonna start in September?
03:07 All those things we hope to find out at the end of July.
03:09 (laughs)