By Harry Allison
Temple football coach Rod Carey on yesterday’s Zoom presser about the state of play during the pandemic:
“I would not have played the last three weeks, but again it is an opinion and I am not the decision maker,” Carey.
Who said to play?
“It is a whole process that the conference has laid out and obviously getting the support from our university and then it goes to the conference and the conference has a medical advisory committee — which is really only charged with COVID, not total health of the team — and then it goes to the presidents and ADs from there,” Carey said.
Temple’s last three were a 38-3 loss at Tulane on Oct. 31, a 43-27 home loss to SMU on Nov. 7, and a 38-13 defeat at Central Florida on Saturday.
“I would have tried to reschedule those games; it’s not that I did not want to play the games,” Carey said. “I want the opportunities for the young men, but I think rescheduling would have given us our best opportunity, not competitively but as far as numbers-wise and safety wise.”
Carey said Temple traveled to UCF with 45 scholarship players and he estimated about 16 walk-ons. He said the numbers were slightly higher for the previous two games, but they were declining.
“I think we have been at a critical mass for three weeks, but the powers that be have not agreed,” he said.
Temple spokesperson Larry Dougherty responded to Carey’s comments.
“We support our coach, but there is a process with the AAC that schools go through when they want to ask for a postponement or cancellation,” Dougherty said. “That goes to the league’s medical advisory board and they base it on COVID protocol issues and Temple didn’t fall under their parameters to postpone or cancel their three games. They allowed for the movement of the SMU game but didn’t’ postpone it any further.”
