Former Arizona athletic director Greg Byrne, now in the hub of college football in the SEC as the head man of athletics at Alabama, was a guest of the Eye on the Ball radio show on KVOI (1030-AM) on Monday night with co-hosts Jay Gonzales and Steve Rivera.
The Eye on the Ball show is weekdays at 6 p.m. that includes a live online stream.
Byrne talked about the feasibility of college football in the fall, and Gonzales led off the show asking him about the Crimson Tide opening their season against USC on Sept. 5 at AT&T Stadium at Arlington, Texas. Gonzales asked him to tell the listeners that game “is on.”
“Well, it is on,” Byrne said.
Byrne said in order for that to happen, if a viable vaccine is not formulated by then, these factors will be involved:
— Increased testing and more rapid testing, including saliva-based testing.
— Tracing.
— Social distancing and proper hygiene.
–Wearing of masks.
“I’m more optimistic than I have been about us having the ability to have a fall sports season, so that’s our volleyball team, that’s our soccer team as well, and we do play a little football, too,” Byrne said. “Obviously it would be a lot of fun to have that happen.”
Byrne also talked about each conference making their own decisions on moving forward with students returning to school and competing in fall sports, proceeding with fans in the stands for football games (very important for revenue), and the possibility of non-revenue sports being dropped if fans can’t attend football games or football is cancelled altogether next school year.
You can listen to the entire interview here:
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon.
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