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PROVO — The biggest question surrounding BYU’s fall camp this week — the only college football team in Utah still practicing amid an uncertain season due to the COVID-19 pandemic — is one that head coach Kalani Sitake has little to no control.
It’s not about injuries or schemes or defensive formations as the first-time FBS head coach prepares for his fourth year in charge of his alma mater.
It can be defined in three words: Will they play?
The Cougars currently have four games scheduled for the 2020 campaign. But that’s not expected to be the entire season; later Monday night, the Times Herald-Record reported that BYU will travel to play at Army on Sept. 19, a week that opened on the Cougars’ schedule with the Pac-12’s cancelation of a road game at Arizona State.
It would be the Cougars' first-ever game on the U.S. military base in upstate New York.
Neither BYU nor the West Point military academy confirmed the matchup Tuesday, but Sitake expressed confidence after practice in athletic director Tom Holmoe’s ability to schedule the game — or any game to refill the schedule, for that matter.
“I know that Tom’s working hard to get our schedule,” Sitake said. “I think there has been a lot of talk about it, so we’ll see what happens in the next little bit.
“I’m going to let Tom do his part, and I’ll do mine, which is to coach these guys up.”
The matchup between two of college football’s seven FBS independent programs makes plenty of sense, too. Like BYU, Army only has four games on its 2020 schedule — including the annual Army-Navy game at the end of the year that both military academies have vowed to play, no matter college football’s other rulings.
The Black Knights have a game scheduled Sept. 12 at Rice, but lost games Sept. 26 at Oklahoma and Oc. 3 at Miami (Ohio), among others. That opened up a spot for the Cougars to fill Sept. 19, less than two weeks after the currently scheduled opener Sept. 7 at Navy.
Those are the spaces Holmoe is working to fill, and the main reason why players like wide receiver Gunner Romney say that every time they see him, he’s on the phone.
“I have a lot of trust in our administration, in Tom Holmoe and the athletic administration,” Romney said. “He’s been working day in and day out.
“We’re really hoping for a full season, and I think we’ll get it.”
Holmoe has been working the phones plenty of late. In addition to the first game against the Midshipmen since 1989, BYU will host Troy in the first of a home-and-home series Sept. 26, one of three home games on the current schedule.
The range of cancellations from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten to the Mid-American Conference and several other leagues in between has made Holmoe’s job difficult. So, too, did the SEC’s decision to only play conference games, and the ACC and Big 12 limiting nonconference games to one per team — a schedule that has already been finalized (with few exceptions).
While scheduling college football games in the middle of a global pandemic may seem trivial to some, BYU offensive line coach Eric Mateos agrees — but also is quick to add that the $7 billion industry that is big-time FBS football is big business in much of the country, including the southeastern states.
“I’ve got a lot of connections in the SEC, in the Sun Belt, and they have that slogan ‘it just means more.’ It means a lot to those people, to those economies, to those communities,” said Mateos, who coached at Arkansas, LSU and Texas State prior to coming to Provo in 2019. “Everybody is under the impression (in the South) that we’re going. It was a little iffy for a few days. But I think when the university presidents said ‘We’re going,’ the vibe changed a bit.”
BYU is the western-most Division I football team still playing the 2020 season, just ahead of Air Force, which may play a limited schedule after the Mountain West postponed the season to the spring. That might leave BYU traveling for more than the usual six road games to which the program is accustomed.
For what it’s worth, that’s just fine with Romney.
“When it comes down to it, I just want to play football,” Romney said. “We could go to a park here and line up with no fans, and I’d be down with it.
“I’m happy for anything, as long as we’re playing.”
