Gene Taylor Press Conference

GENE TAYLOR, ATHLETICS DIRECTOR
Opening Statement...
"Good morning everybody. I appreciate you being here and being on. Obviously, we are very excited about today with the announcement of the schedule and the commitment to play the season. I know our football team has indicated they want to be able to have an opportunity to play as long as it is safe. Our presidents and everybody did a great job and athletic directors over the last several days in working through this process. I appreciate you being on the call today."

On if the Big 12 Conference saved college football yesterday...
"That is a great question. I don't know if we saved college football necessarily. We still have a long ways to go between now and September 12, and certainly we need to do our best to keep these kids safe, whether it is making sure we are testing them and keeping them safe with mask wearing and social distancing and all of those things when the students come back. I do think it was a great step in saying we are committed to our student-athletes, because when we talked to them, our coaches talked to our student-athletes, they want to play, but they want to play with the opportunity that is safe. I do think more than the last 24 hours, more like the last several days between presidents talking and us as ADs and coaches talking, we really wanted to say, 'What do we need to do to be safe?' Our medical advisors, Dr. (Kyle) Goerl on our staff here at K-State has been awesome, and all the team docs have really worked through together to come up with what is the best way we can continue to move forward and do it safely. That really is what the last 24 hours is where they, yesterday in particular, had the conversation with many doctors beyond the Big 12 doctors. Additional cardiologists, pulmonologists, we had infectious disease docs, and after probably an hour of conversation, they came up with the additional protocols that we put in place. It has been interesting. I learned a lot in the last several days and words that I can't even pronounce to be honest with you."

On fans being able to attend games and what plans the operations staff has in place...
"They have been actually working for a while now, to be honest with you. Our operations staff, our marketing staff, our ticketing staff, our Ahearn Fund members putting plans, actually multiple plans together. Working with our county to get that go ahead with whatever number of fans we are going to be allowed to have. We do know it is going to be limited. We just don't know what that limit is going to be. Until we get that word, we just have our plans in place. Hopefully, in the next few days, we'll kind of put out an operation of what we will be doing, even if we don't have a fan number. But we are still finalizing and tweaking that. The county health department and the folks at the county are the ones who give us that number and that go ahead at some point."

On current Riley County restrictions for gatherings of 2,000 or more people...
"Well that is something we are talking with them about, to be honest with you. What are our options and what are the procedures we have to put into place and go through to have the approval to have more than 2,000 fans in a venue. I know they are working on a lot of things on their end in terms of the county health department and our county commissioners and with our folks on campus, President Myers, the Provost. We have all run it by the leadership here, our cabinet on campus. We have got what we think is a good plan, and we will get that to them. If they need additional feedback about, 'What are you going to do about this or that,' we will certainly have that in place. We were kind of hoping to have that this week, but we didn't know what the Big 12 decision was going to be, so we wanted to wait until we got that finalized. We will go ahead and work on continuing to move forward with the county and try to get a number and get our processes in front of them so we know what we need to get the approval above the 2,000."

On if his confidence level of playing football this fall has changed...
"It is like riding a roller coaster, it is up and down. Right now it is up, and, really, the conversation last night with the docs and with our presidents and the ADs. We are committed to trying to play football. We are also committed to doing it safe and that our athletes aren't going to be in any sort of additional harm. If at some point between now and September 12 our medical advisors tell us something different, we will certainly adjust. I am confident we all know, at least in the Big 12, our presidents, our ADs and our coaches we all want to move forward and play football this year."

On the Big 10's announcement and the pressure to make a decision on college football...
"I don't know if it was direct pressure. But I certainly didn't get a call from any Big 10 or Pac-12 AD, and I don't know if any of our presidents did. We were all going to have to make that decision. That was one of the things we talked about is we can't necessarily worry about how they came to their decisions because it's different circumstances, than the Pac-12 for instance. The city of L.A., and those areas are much more positive cases. They have many more issues to deal with. The Big 10, they got Rutgers and Maryland out the east coast and have some additional issues. We said, 'What's best for us?' Whatever decision we make needs to be what's best for the Big 12 and not worry about the Big 10 because they came up with their decision for different reasons than we did. So, we felt pretty confident that we had to make a decision for our student-athletes, our coaches, our programs and decide, 'What's the best for the Big 12?' When we got there, then we worked through the process from that point on."

On testing and non-conference opponents...
"That is a good question. We talked with Arkansas State this morning and they planned on doing a test because that was what is in the NCAA protocols. As we sent them our contract, we said they would need to follow the Big 12 protocols of testing, and that is now changed from one to three. We offered to help them with that if they so desired, and I think we probably will for the additional two tests, just because we want to get that 10th game. The other thing is our athletes want to know they are tested. They want to know they are coming in negative. So again, that commitment to our student-athletes to be safe that if we had to pay for those extra two tests, then we would be happy with that."

On challenges of testing three times, both financially or logistically...
"It is going to be both. It is obviously not cheap. When we talked with Dr. Goerl and our medical folks, we were hoping those numbers were going to come down and the types of tests that can get the reliability get better, one test per week can be the current PCR test. Then we are looking at the antigen testing and maybe a swab of some kind. Again, I am not a medical doctor, but we think those tests will be available by the time September rolls around. That there will be a faster turnaround for those. I know one requirement is that one of those three has to be a PCR and the other two will be either an antigen testing or some type of nasal swab."

On the decision to add Arkansas State to the 2020 schedule and were other teams contacted...
"It actually happened pretty quickly. As the conferences, and not just us, started to go to conference-only, a lot of things began to open up. Honestly, we were committed to playing both or either UND or Buffalo depending on what happened. Then of course the FCS decided to not play, so that is when we lost North Dakota. We were still kind of waiting on the MAC. In the meantime, we were starting to get calls from Arkansas State and other teams. There were probably three or four teams that had reached out to us for the potential to play. Arkansas State was one of the early ones, and we just kept that conversation going. Once we realized and decided we were going to conference-plus one, and then we knew the MAC and Buffalo and North Dakota were out, we started to finalize the conversation with Arkansas State because they had been one of the early ones. It moved pretty quickly, and we were able to get an agreement that worked out for them and us."

On teams such as Nebraska talking about joining the Big 12 Conference to play this season ...
"I think it is not really going to happen. I mean, we are all committed, at least in the Power 5, to some pretty strict conference agreements and contracts and television contracts. So we are not sure if Nebraska even wants to do that. Notre Dame is a little different because I think there was a relationship with the ACC, and they are an independent, other than their NBC contract. For us to bring someone else in, we would have some serious contractual issues to deal with for Nebraska or someone else to leave their conference would be highly unusual. I think it is just social media talk right now and not really accurate."

On what he learned about the medical plan and how it evolved ...
"I think the biggest thing - and it is twofold - Our doctors, Dr. Goerl, as you know, he is our K-State doctor here on campus, but he has also been one of the leading ones and advisors for the Big 12 and Power 5, so I have been fortunate and our medical staff and our coaches have been fortunate to talk with Kyle pretty regularly about where we were going throughout the process. He started to mention a few weeks ago that he felt we probably needed to test more frequently than once in terms of testing for COVID. We have known about the cardiac concerns and how the virus does attack, or potentially could attack the heart. We had been doing EKG testing and echo testing of our kids who have already tested positive, but a couple of days ago he said, 'Gene, I am a little concerned we need to take the next step,' which is a cardiac MRI. So on the call we had yesterday, we had a couple of cardiologists, a pulmonologist, we had several doctors outside of the Big 12 team doctors that really kind of enlightened us and talked us through the issues and the potential issues if a COVID-positive athlete would have potentially on their heart. The studies are small, the data isn't there, but we didn't want to take the test. Like any other athlete we have a very strict concussion protocol, and if someone were to have a serious neck injury or back injury, we have some pretty strict protocols before we allow those athletes to come back to play. That was kind of the biggest issue. They told us, 'Look guys, even though we don't know for sure, we want to make sure before we allow them to come back to play that they feel safe, that their family feels safe, and that we have done everything that we can.' I think that is where the comfort level of the presidents started to grow. If we do these tests, we'll feel better about whether the athlete is safe to play."

On what he thinks about collegiate player associations and their impact...
"I've actually applauded all of our athletes, not only here at K-State, but collectively throughout the Big 12. Obviously, I haven't talked to a Big 10 or Pac-12 athlete. We've done a great job, Bob (Bowlsby) and some of our leadership, AD's. We've had two calls of two athletes from each of the Big 12 schools to talk about where we are. Whether it's COVID or anything else, and they have been talking on their own. We had a call this week about what they were thinking. Their biggest concerns were eligibility, the extension of the clock, keeping their scholarships if they opt out. We had really good conversations. I encourage that. We obviously have a student-athlete advisory committee and Coach Klieman has a leadership council beyond just his captains. So, we're encouraging them to bring those voices, feel more comfortable coming to us as leaders and administrators saying, 'This is what we want and these are our concerns.' I think we need to hear that. We need to do everything we can to make sure that their experience here is even better. We have done a lot of great things, but there are things they have concerns about. I encourage them to speak out and share their concerns. If we can fix it, great. But we also have to have honest conversations with them and say, 'You know guys, we probably can't have you sharing the TV revenue, but there are some things we can do.' More testing and all the things we put into place are the things those athletes gave us feedback on, and I think that's great."

On rescheduling the canceled football games of Buffalo, North Dakota and Vanderbilt ...
"I haven't talked a lot to Vanderbilt just because I haven't had time. I have talked to both the AD at Buffalo and UND and have talked about looking at out years. We haven't solidified anything. In terms of the guarantee, that is kind of off the table because they canceled on us and we canceled on them. I am fine to play both of them at some point. We just really haven't looked at each others out years. I don't think we have an option until 2026 at this point. But yeah, if they want to play us and it works, we would be happy to play them again or put them back on the schedule."

On if the league has a policy or procedure on making up a game...
"That is one thing we are still working through with our coaches in terms of what is going to require cancellation. What is the percentage of athletes that may not be available to play? That is the one thing we haven't finalized yet. It will be a conference decision. Say, for instance, we are going into the Oklahoma State game and they come back and say we have hit the threshold that we can't play because we have this many kids positive. The way the schedule is set, we have options. We have the two bye weeks. And then we have the additional week at the end of the schedule that we could make up those games down the road once they go through whatever their quarantine or isolation period is. It is going to be a conference decision, and it is going to be consistent across each team. We haven't finalized what that threshold is going to be yet."

On the new football schedule for 2020...
"Trust me, I have seen some of them that had us at Oklahoma, home against Oklahoma State and Texas. I have probably seen a dozen or more versions. That is one thing about being on these committees. You kind of have to take your personal stuff out and look at what is best for the conference. This is my first time. Normally, we don't even have input on the schedule. Normally, we get the schedule and that is the schedule, but because of the uniqueness, we had the subcommittee. The biggest thing was talking about how they could collapse and common opponents, so if you had a delayed game, or I don't know if you saw where it could be held but not started until October 1 if we had to and still get all the games in. We have a scheduler doing all that for us. Those are all things I had never seen before. I think this is year 16 or 18 out of 20 that we have been sent out on the road for the first game. You have to kind of not focus on that and focus on the bigger picture."

On the need to reshuffle the 2020 football schedule...
"That is a great question, and that is where our scheduling guru is really helpful. Going through it the first time, there were a lot of things I had never even heard them talk about in terms of them being able to collapse the schedule and being able to have the opponents kind of spaced together. Then we have the core principles of scheduling and some soft principles and trying to make sure we met as many of those as we could. When they put it together, we would get the games, like I said, I probably saw a dozen different versions, all of us keeping the opponents we were supposed to have at home and the opponents we were supposed to have on the road so you didn't have to play somebody two years in a row. That was obviously something that was important. How they figured out the collapsing and how they figured out who played who was really critical in us being able to have adjustments during the course of the year if there were cancellations or postponements. Each time we looked at one, until we got to this one, there were one or two teams that were really not meeting the core principles. Until we got to this one, it met most of the core principles and a majority of the soft principles. We had to keep adjusting until we got there. There was a lot of conversation. Believe me."

On if he felt the tide was turning for the Big 12 and football wouldn't be played this fall...
"Yeah, there were several, I'll be honest with you. When the Big Ten and the Pac-12 came out, it was feeling pretty ominous that we weren't going to have football. There were a few of us that were pretty strong that we wanted to do everything we could. There were other ADs that started to think is this what we really needed to do. That is why the call yesterday was so helpful because the numbers of really talented and really smart cardiologists and folks that kind of helped us through our ability to play safely for our athletes if we did these additional protocols. I think by the end of the call last night, most people were feeling pretty good about it and felt we were making the best decision. I think that is when it came down to is this the best decision for the Big 12 and our student-athletes and are we giving them enough information where they feel like they can walk out on the field and be safe. Again, if something changes, we have the ability to pivot and not continue to move forward. Right now, we're pretty excited about being able to get to this point."

On if he needed to pay cancellation fees on the North Dakota and Buffalo games ...
No, we will not. Both of those are off the table. It was a mutual agreement. Had North Dakota really wanted to play us, then we probably had to figure that one out. But both of the AD's were like, 'Look, let's just wipe it off the table. If we can play later, great. If not, then let's just call it good.' So we will not have to pay those cancellations fees."

Kansas State University Athletics

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