Bevo’s Daily Roundup: Big 12 commissioner says COVID-19 disruptions may ‘coexist’ with the college football season

Last week, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby had a frank conversation about the coronavirus’ influence over the college football season with The Bottom Line on Austin’s AM 1300. Here are a few of the particularly interesting highlights, via reporting by 247Sports.

Bowlsby on the longterm future: “It’s likely to be a bumpy road for the next 24 months or so. We should expect there will be disruptions. There will be a Wednesday or Thursday when we find out we have an outbreak in a locker room, or on a campus, and we’re just not going to be able to play the game on Saturday. We’ll have to find another game or cancel it. We just have to count on those things, because there are going to be disruptions during the course of a season. And I think that will be particularly true when we get to November, December and January, when we’re in the heart of the cold and flu and virus season.”

Bowlsby on the possibility of having football in the spring: “[It’s] a fallback if we get started during the regular, traditional, fall season and find out we have a disruption. I don’t think we’re going to pre-emptively go to that, because there isn’t any guarantee we’ll be any better off in March, April and May than we were this March, April and May. We’re still in social distancing in the middle of May this year, and there’s no certainty we wouldn’t be next year. It would be correct to say we might be in better shape in terms of possibly having a vaccine [this spring]. But the vaccine isn’t necessarily going to keep you from getting the virus. It’s likely to mitigate the severity and it will likely keep people from incurring fatalities.”

Before you catch up today’s news, feel free to indulge in a long, long sigh.

WHAT THE WISE MEN ARE SAYING ABOUT THE LONGHORNS

Austin American-Statesman: Longhorn Confidential: What a quartet of commitments means for Texas’ class of 2021

Austin American-Statesman: The Dotted Line: Five 2020 Texas signees poised for immediate playing time in 2020

Dallas Morning News: As Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby says no date is set to decide on athletes’ return, the options are well defined

Sports Illustrated: The Recruiting Big Board: running back

Sports Illustrated: Where does Sam Ehlinger rank among Texas quarterbacks since 2000?

247Sports: Relationships and effort were biggest factors for Casey Cain

247Sports: Analyzing Texas’ scholarship numbers ahead of the 2020 season

247Sports: Longhorns know bowl win alone won’t lead to prosperity

247Sports: Recruiting under Tom Herman has Texas on appropriate trajectory

247Sports: How Texas came out of a bizarre spring a transfer portal winner

247Sports: Source: New Texas staff protocol upon returning to campus

247Sports: Texas Morning Brew: What can we expect from Chris Ash?

ICYMI IN BURNT ORANGE NATION

Texas jack Joseph Ossai looking to build on Alamo Bowl performance

Texas coaches back on campus as the Big 12 discusses player return date

WHAT WE’RE READING

SBNation: A South Korean club may have used sex dolls as fans

SBNation: Lebron says he considered playing in NFL during 2011 NBA lockout, and the Cowboys sent him a contract

SBNation: California governor Gavin Newsom says sports could return to golden state by early June

The Ringer: Conspiracy Corner: Did Michael Jordan really eat an entire poisoned pizza before the flu game?

NEWS ACROSS THE LONGHORN REPUBLIC AND COLLEGE SPORTS

• COVID-19 has turned life upside down in the recent months, and among the many new realities is being required to wear face masks nearly every time you step out into the public. While that’s still an adjustment for us all, it doesn’t have to be an inconvenience, and during a time in which sports are almost entirely absent, FOCO presents a stylish opportunity to still represent the Burnt Orange Nation with three-packs of Texas-themed face covers. FOCO features a Bevo pack, a Longhorns pack, and a super fan pack, and to provide some assistance during these trying times, FOCO will donate a portion of the proceeds from each sale to the university’s Student Emergency Fund. Why wait? Pre-order yours now!

• Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger’s coronavirus relief GoFundMe has so netted more than $200,000, Ehlinger told the hosts of SiriusXM’s ESPNU radio show. “We had $107,000 in donations and then we had a direct donation to the Boys and Girls Club for $25,000 from a close family friend,” Ehlinger said. “That was actually doubled by a local donor, so that, in turn, was a $50,000 donation.” Ehlinger later continued, “I think after it’s all said and done, we’ll probably end up donating a little bit over $200,000 to a few different nonprofits around Austin and then also for a national cause as well.”

• Longhorn athletes are smart. The latest NCAA Division I Academic Progress Rate released earlier today proves that, as the university’s athletes surpassed the required standard in all 20 of the NCAA’s athletics programs. “All 20 UT sport programs recorded at least a 968 score in the latest APR, including three with perfect 1,000 scores (women’s soccer, men’s tennis and women’s tennis). All three of those teams received public recognition awards last week,” the university writes in a press release. “The APR provides a real-time look at a team’s academic success by tracking the academic progress of each student-athlete during the school year. The APR accounts for eligibility, retention and graduation in the calculation and provides a measure of each team’s academic performance.”