Miami Hurricanes sticking to plan to return to campus

Speaking to the Miami Herald on Monday, Miami Hurricanes athletic director Blake James stated he is confident in their plan to bring athletes back to campus and that they have been able to stick to the plan.

With about 65 Miami Hurricanes football players returning to campus earlier this month, athletic director Blake James told the Miami Herald on Monday that the athletic department is confident with the plan in place. James acknowledged that despite the plan for athletes to return to campus the future is still unknown.

James has worked with the Miami Hurricanes community that includes President Julio Frenk who is a global expert in pandemics and football coach Manny Diaz to work on the plan for what is best with the players to keep them safe. Each week with the players returning to the Miami campus will rate new challenges.

College football reached the halfway point last week between the halt of collegiate sports in March and the scheduled start of the 2020 season in September. James acknowledged as Diaz has frequently to know how the season will look opening weekend in September is difficult to judge. The world continues to evolve.

Sports are a mirror of the world returning to normal if not an ascendant for it. The NCAA, Miami football program and each state will have different regulations on how athletes return to their campuses at different rates, times and rules. It will be James, the Miami Hurricanes athletic staff and university at large to figure it all out.

"“We’re very blessed that we have a very good plan, and that we’ve been able to really stick to our plan and been able to keep our guys here working out…With that said, we’re in Week 2 and we don’t know what the future’s going to look like. We’re going to continue to bring more and more kids back to campus.And as you bring more and more kids back to campus, obviously there’s the opportunity for them to go out and be in the community. And that’s why we just have to really emphasize the importance of social distancing, wearing masks, washing their hands or using hand sanitizer.I don’t think you can say you’re not going to have things happen. I think it’s you try to create a system that has as little impact as possible, and that’s my hope that we do that.Last Friday we were 11 weeks away from the opening weekend and we were 13 weeks into this if you count March 13 as kind of the start, so we’re not at the halfway point, we’re beyond that…but I just think we’re still too early to say what it’s going to look like.The optimist in me says, ‘Yeah, we’re still going to have football.’Do I think there’s a lot of things we have to do to get to that point? Without a doubt. We just talked about some of those and some of it falls on us here on campus, but some of it falls on everyone in the community, I think, to really continue to follow the guidelines that our leadership puts in place and hopefully people will continue to that.”"

James’ point about if there will be football is a critical one. It is going to take FBS teams trying to be on the same page as much as possible to get to where they need to be. Miami opens with Temple September 5. How will Philadelphia and Miami differ in Covid-19 rates and what are the different regulations?

As James closed with, getting everyone in the community to follow the guidelines is what is going to help football get back to normal. It’s not likely that fans will be in the stands at full capacity to open the season or even potentially at any time during the season. To get to that point everyone has to be respectful to the community.