Baylor Football Season Opener Postponed Due To Multiple Louisiana Tech Players Testing Positive For Coronavirus
WACO, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) – The scheduled football season opener between Baylor and Louisiana Tech has been postponed, and will not be played on Saturday, September 12.
Reports are that Louisiana Tech had dozens of players test positive for COVID-19 in the wake of Hurricane Laura.
Source: Louisiana Tech and Baylor are postponing their game scheduled for Saturday. Louisiana Tech had an outbreak of positive COVID tests in the wake of Hurricane Laura, as 38 players tested positive. Prior to Laura, they'd had just one positive over three weeks amid 350 tests.
— Pete Thamel (@PeteThamel) September 9, 2020
Several other players would have been out due to contact-tracing.
Baylor is the third Big 12 team forced to postpone its scheduled season opener this weekend, along with TCU and Oklahoma State.
The remaining seven Big 12 teams are scheduled to play on Saturday.
Baylor and LA Tech have agreed to monitor dates throughout the season to potentially make up the game.
"We are incredibly disappointed to announce the postponement of our upcoming football game against Louisiana Tech," said Baylor Director of Athletics Mack B. Rhoades. "However, in the interest of the health and wellness of our student-athletes, coaches, and staff, we are confident in this unfortunate but necessary course of action. To the Baylor and Louisiana Tech student-athletes and communities, we share in your disappointment and look ahead to resuming play."
"We are obviously very disappointed that we will not be able to open the season this weekend at Baylor," said Louisiana Tech Director of Athletics Tommy McClelland. "However, with the number of recent positive COVID-19 results and contact tracing, it is simply not possible. We would be putting our student-athletes at risk.
"It is obvious that the impact of Hurricane Laura in our community a few weeks ago really sparked our significant increase in numbers. With 95 percent of our city losing power for days – even up to a week in many areas – our student-athletes were forced to find places to stay and some even had family from south Louisiana that came northward to stay with them. So many things that we were able to control for the month of August became out of our control, and I think the numbers prove that it took its toll.
"The days leading up to this outbreak, we had a stretch of three weeks with only one positive case. So the protocols we had in place were working prior to Hurricane Laura."