San Diego State Director of Athletics John David Wicker transcript from his video news conference on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020.
Q: (opening statement):
"Good afternoon and I appreciate everyone taking the time to join us today. Obviously, the last 24 hours, week, five months, you name it, have been a challenging time for us. The decisions made yesterday by the presidents and the board of directors of the Mountain West Conference were decisions that were thought about, deeply researched. A lot of time spent with medical experts understanding where we are with COVID-19 currently and the presidents came to a decision that is fully supported by SDSU - by our coaches, our student-athletes and our staff. While it is deeply disappointing that we are not going to play football, soccer, volleyball, cross country this fall, we are committed toward working to compete in the spring. We want to give our student-athletes that opportunity to play and we feel like right now is not the right time to try that with all of the different health risks that could potentially be there in a COVID-19 situation.
"We will start working now with our student-athletes, coaches and staff towards the spring and what that looks like. We will continue to have student-athletes in San Diego and our goal is to have them working out. We want to continue to provide them all the necessary tools that we can. That is something that has been important to us. We feel like the ability to have them in San Diego, to be able to provide them housing or access to housing, nutrition, meals, immediate access to health care, puts them in a much better situation than they might be otherwise.
"We are going to continue to work with our student-athletes, coaches and staff as we move into the fall and into the spring and we are going to come out of this stronger and better and we are looking forward to moving through this successfully."
Q: How do you deal with the economic challenges for the athletic department:
"At this point we are still assessing that (the economic impact). We are planning on playing football in the spring. We are still figuring out what our basketball season is going to look like. There is still going to be opportunities for revenue. If we can deliver the number of games required for our TV contract, then we'll generate that revenue. We will also wait to see what happens with the college football playoff. As we know, recently the Big 10 and the PAC-12 have come out and delayed their fall season to the spring. If the rest of the Power 5 does that then one would think that a College Football Playoff would happen in the spring so there is revenue there.
"We have a significant number of models from a budget standpoint drawn up. It can be anywhere from a $12 million hit down to a couple million dollar hit, and we have worked with the president and folks in business and financial affairs to understand what that is and as we move through this we will probably work on what a loan would look like to the athletic department, through campus, that obviously we would have to repay."
Q: Can you put a price tag on how much COVID-19 testing will cost:
"We do not have a specific number at this point. We are still working through exactly what our testing protocol would have been once we hit competition. We have been testing our student-athletes since they have been back. We are still working through a campus opportunity from a testing standpoint. As we get back on campus, once school officially starts, we will be able to better assess exactly what that is going to be."
Q: What is the message to student-athletes and parents about scholarships and eligibility:
"We are definitely going to honor all of our scholarships. Any student athlete that is on a scholarship, if they you know are back in San Diego and they are practicing or if they opt out for coronavirus reasons their scholarship will be honored.
Obviously, the health and safety and well being of our student athletes, and our coaches and our staff is at the forefront. We are going to continue working with our repopulation plan. We have done a significant amount of work with our staff, our athletic trainers, our doctors and medical professionals across campus. Then looking at what the NCAA the county and the state of California have put out from a guidance standpoint, we are creating a safe environment for these young men and women to come back and practice and compete in the spring."
As far as eligibility for fall sports we are looking at a spring season. The NCAA will make a ruling by the end of this week on what eligibility will be for those fall sports student-athletes should a season get canceled, or be impacted by the number of contests or if they opt out, similar to what they did with our spring sports. I believe by Aug. 21 the NCAA will rule on what they are going to do with fall sports championships. If you, you know, see what's been happening today in the last couple days I would imagine the fall sports will probably end up getting postponed but that is another date later this month to pay attention to."
Q: What does a spring football schedule look like:
"That is a great question. We have not spent a lot of time working through what a spring schedule would look like."
I imagine it would be shortened similar to what we were proposing, eight to 10 games. You do have to give consideration to those schools that are located in colder climates. Do you want to be playing football in Laramie Wyoming in January or February? Hypothetically, again, we have not talked a whole lot about this. Potentially you're playing eight to 10 games in March and April, try to have college football playoff at the beginning of May."
You give kids the rest of May and June off come back with some strength and conditioning in July and start camp in August. That is one very hypothetical situation that has not been discussed with a whole lot of folks. We will need to talk to coaches, student athletes and medical experts on how many games we think is right for a student-athlete to participate in in any given year. That is the work we're going to do this fall."
Q: Do the opponents stay the same in the spring:
"I honestly do not know at this point. We kind of have to figure out what everybody is going to do this fall. We will have to see what that looks like and how a spring schedule kind of shakes out."
Q: Could you have provided a safer structure for the players than if they were on their own:
"Well I think one, one of the misnomers that's out there, we're still going provide that safe umbrella. Our plan is to still have student athletes here. We will do testing. We will be able to provide all the things, housing nutrition ready access to medical care, we are just not going to play games at this point. We will have to work through the phases of getting back to practice. I am not sure when we would have been able to actually hit, as we think about preparing for a Sept. 26 football game. We are not really going to change anything on how we are treating the health and safety of our student athletes in that our plan is still to keep them in town."
Q: Is there contingency planning if a spring season is not able to be played:
"It goes back to that later this week the NCAA is going come out with what happens with eligibility and whether you have a season, or you don't have a season. As I mentioned earlier, we have got quite a few different budget scenarios that show a wide range of what could happen based on playing sports, playing sports with fans in the building, playing sports without fans in the building, playing some sports, not playing any sports at all. We will continue to work through all the different pieces as we move through the upcoming months, and hopefully we continue to see great progress in the science and medical fields of advance testing, and we will see where a vaccine ends up coming in. I think for us, the testing piece is more important than anything else."
Q: What has been the consensus of the student-athletes:
"One of the things I'm proud that we have done from a coaches and an administrative standpoint, we have been very transparent with our student-athletes. We started sharing our repopulation plan with them a couple of months ago. We have shared the repopulation plan with parents via zoom meetings. We have really tried to help our student-athletes understand all the steps that we are going through, to make sure we can keep them as healthy and safe as possible. We had meetings last week after the PAC-12 and Big 10 united groups came out. We met with our football student-athletes and talked about all the things that were involved there. Got to hear some of their questions and some of their concerns. I think for the most part, our student-athletes have been comfortable with the health and safety guidelines that we have put in place. They know that we are here to take care of them and not put them into any unnecessarily risky ventures. They are obviously disappointed. They were looking forward to playing, much like our spring student athletes were very disappointed with what happened. I can say this, the student-athletes have been very happy to be back, been very happy to get back into some sense of normalcy and to be doing some things within their sport. They have been excited to be back."
Q: Has there been talk about postponing other sports for the remainder of the year:
"The presidents were very specific that it is an indefinite postponement, and we are still considering what the winter sports look like. Specifically, with men's and women's basketball it is a much smaller cohort of student athletes and coaches and staff. From a testing protocol and other pieces like that it may be easier to manage that and get them started prior to January 1. That's something that we'll continue to work through."
Q: Was this a particularly bad time for this to hit given the success of your sports last spring and the excitement for this fall:
"Obviously there's no good time, I feel terrible for the student- athletes and our coaches and staff that have worked so hard to get where we are today I mean you're talking about young men and women who have spent the majority of their lives, getting to a particular point in their particular craft where they can get a Division I scholarship. My hope is that we can continue to work through this and get back to what it was.
"Our future is so bright right now. We are going to break ground on a football stadium in the next day or two that is going to be a phenomenal stadium,, not only for San Diego State football our men's and women's soccer program and lacrosse, but the community of San Diego is going to get to benefit from this stadium. It is that long term
"Our basketball program last year was phenomenal. I am so disappointed for those kids that did not get to go to the NCAA tournament, but our women's swim and dive team had just as good of a year. They shattered the Mountain West Conference record for points. I feel really bad for them.
"In the short term, yeah this really hurts. But I am very excited for the long-term opportunities of this athletic department. We have great coaches. We have great student-athletes. Our coaches recruit quality young men and women who are not here just to compete on the field but the are here to compete in the classroom as well. They want to get their degree. It is really challenging but the long-term health of San Diego State University and our athletic department, we are going to be just fine."
John David Wicker News Conference Transcript
