K-State Q&A: What to expect as summer football workouts begin for Wildcats
It’s time for another K-State Q&A.
Instead of beginning this week’s mailbag with a few monologue-style paragraphs that beautifully transition us into your questions, I have decided to instead quote one of the greatest fictional athletes in the history of sports.
His name: Jackie Moon.
Moon was actually much more than an athlete. Not only did he play power forward for the Flint Tropics in the movie “Semi-Pro,” he also coached and owned the ABA team. In his final season, he helped the Tropics beat the San Antonio Spurs and win the Flint, Michigan Megabowl by using one main rule on his team.
The only thing he asked was that “everybody love everybody.”
Those seem like words we could all live by right now.
And with that, it’s time to get to your questions. Thanks, as always, for providing them.
This is a job for Captain Hindsight.
Unfortunately, no one can predict the best possible plan for bringing college athletes back to campus during the coronavirus pandemic. That’s something that won’t be revealed until much later and we have all had time to see and study the results.
Could Lincoln Riley be on to something by asking his players to wait until July 1 to resume summer workouts? Maybe. But it could also be a mistake. More and more businesses are opening. Fewer and fewer people are wearing masks. After seeing videos from Lake of the Ozarks and Las Vegas, it seems like some are acting like the pandemic is over. It’s possible bringing athletes back to campus now for June 15 workouts and limiting their risk to those types of exposures could be the safer play.
Of course, Riley might also be playing this exactly right.
We just don’t know.
My guess is more than a few college football teams will have a player or two test positive for COVID-19 when they return to campus. Too many people are getting it without experiencing symptoms and unknowingly spreading it.
The good news is one, or even a few, positive tests can be handled by an athletic department.
At Kansas State, the Wildcats plan to test every athlete for both the coronavirus and COVID-19 antibodies before they are allowed to resume voluntary workouts. Any player that tests positive will quarantine for two weeks before joining their teammates. In theory, that should allow the Wildcats to get back to work, even if some players test positive.
Things have changed since sports around the world were canceled in March because of a few positive tests. With schools gearing up to test and screen their athletes for COVID 19 before they officially interact with their teammates at practice, one positive test shouldn’t shut down the entire operation.
A spike in cases or an outbreak within a prominent team could slow down the process, but both training camp and football season are still months away. I don’t see them derailing anything, at least not right now.
Fans being allowed to watch games is a completely different issue that the schools themselves probably won’t have much control over. If their local government officials says they can play in front of 25% of their normal crowd, that is what they will do. If that number is 50% or 100% capacity, that’s what it will probably be.
As I have written about before, construction remains on schedule for the renovations Kansas State has planned on the south side of Bill Snyder Family Stadium.
You can see the new video boards going up now, and they will be ready come September. The rest of the project, which includes new premium seating and other fun stuff, should be complete by the start of the 2021 season.
Beyond that is a bit of a mystery, though.
Those projects depend on donations from prominent boosters to get built. It’s not like the Wildcats can sell a few extra tickets to cover the costs of a new football practice facility or a volleyball arena. They need donors to give generously.
So the progress of K-State’s other athletic departments will depend greatly on the economy and how much money their donor base is willing to gift. If business is going well, then projects might get built at a normal pace. If business is down, which certainly could be the case right now, things will slow down.
The other part of your question is interesting to me. What will college sports look like after the pandemic passes? That’s a question I have thought about quite a bit.
Here are a few changes I am willing to predict:
- Small buyouts for head coaches. The days of Danny Manning getting a $15 million buyout written into his contract with only one NCAA Tournament appearance (a First Four loss to K-State) to his name are almost certainly over.
- Salaries will drop for average coaches. Paying a coach above market value before he or she earned the money has always been silly.
- Schools will look to schedule more regionally than nationally, and bus to games when possible. That could be fun and create new rivalries while also saving some money.
- Head coaches will have less access to private air travel for recruiting purposes.
You name it, and it has probably been done.
I have heard stories of K-State football players using full milk jugs as weights and tree branches as pull-up bars. I have also seen videos of players pushing pick-up trucks across empty parking lots.
Basically, the Wildcats have been training more like Rocky Balboa (chopping wood and running up mountains) than Ivan Drago (lifting weights in a state-of-the-art facility with strength coaches dissecting his every move) in the movie Rocky IV.
K-State basketball coach Bruce Weber told me his players have had to get very creative over the past few months, as some on his roster like Mike McGuirl and Kaosi Ezeagu haven’t had much access to a basketball goal.
They have spent a lot of time in their garages, working on ball-handling and putting tape on the floor to improve their footwork.
It will be interesting to see where all of K-State’s student-athletes stand when voluntary workouts and practices resume.
It seems like I have been getting asked about guest writers a lot lately.
Sheesh, are my answers that bad?
You probably want me to respond with answers like Bruce Weber and Chris Klieman, but that’s not what this here Q&A is about. They get to speak at their own press conferences all the time.
This question actually got me thinking about something that happened to me a few years ago at a Catbackers event in Wichita. I was there to interview some of the K-State coaches and student-athletes that were on hand to get some material for a few summer stories. While I was waiting, a handful of loyal readers introduced themselves and asked why I hadn’t penned one of these mailbags in a while.
Back then, I only typically wrote one Q&A per month during the summer, as I didn’t think there was enough going on the warrant a mailbag every single week. I explained that to them, but they disagreed wholeheartedly. They had questions, and they wanted answers.
We talked for long enough that at one point I pointed out Bill Snyder and Weber mingling with fans and suggested they save from questions for them. But not even that stopped them. For some reason, they wanted to hear my take on things more than the people who coached their favorite teams.
Talk about an ego boost. Should I use #HumbleBrag here?
That conversation is actually what made me start writing this mailbag every single week, regardless of the season. Props to them!
Anyway, if I let someone else answer questions for a week I would want it to be another media member or a former K-State player that had some interesting things to say about his alma mater.
If you belong to either of those groups and you are reading this and you have interest in answering a few questions on here in the future, drop me a line and maybe we can make it happen.
I am all for less hate in this world.
And I’ve never been a fan of crowds chanting curse words at family sporting events.
But it’s not the most sinister thing in the world, either. There are certainly more pressing issues out there right now.
I don’t see that particular chant changing, or Sandstorm returning to K-State athletic events, anytime soon.
Remember, K-State basketball fans booed loudly when the Jayhawks and Wildcats shook hands in a sign of sportsmanship before their basketball game at Bramlage Coliseum last season.
There’s nothing wrong with a little friendly rivalry in college sports. Hating another team is one of the weird things that makes sports fun.
This story was originally published June 5, 2020 at 8:43 AM.