Sometime this season, Dave Aranda will be making his debut as Baylor’s football coach.
We think.
It won’t be Saturday. Baylor’s newest opener against Houston at McLane Stadium has been postponed because of COVID-19 concerns, the two schools announced Friday.
A source familiar with the discussions indicated that Baylor had a position group unexpectedly fall under the minimum threshold required by the Big 12 to play. SicEm365 reported that contact tracing played a key role in the decision to postpone the game.
The Big 12 mandates at least seven offensive linemen, four interior defensive linemen and one quarterback as part of a 53-man roster.
“The loss of this game is a devastating blow, but in the interest of the health and safety of our student-athletes, we believe we made the necessary decision,” Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades said in a statement. “We are incredibly disappointed with the continued delay to the start of our season, and empathize with our student-athletes, fans, coaches, and administrative staff.
The schools will honor a future home-and-home series that had been negotiated as the part of the whirlwind 12 hours when Rhoades and Houston counterpart Chris Pezman put the game together on the fly last weekend. Each school said they would monitor dates to reschedule, but the off dates for each team fail to match up.
The postponement again illustrated the difficulty of playing a football game in the midst of a pandemic, even with COVID-19 testing and strict medical protocols.
Since the Big 12 unveiled its new plus-one schedule with nine league games and one nonconference games, four contests have been postponed. With the Houston-Baylor game gone, the only Big 12 game on Saturday is Oklahoma State hosting Tulsa — which was postponed from Sept. 12.
Aranda, in his first season since leaving LSU to replace Matt Rhule, will be preparing for his fourth opening opponent Sept. 26, when Baylor is scheduled to host Kansas.
Previously, Baylor had seen openers against Ole Miss (in Houston) and Louisiana Tech bite the dust.
“We’re heartbroken from this postponement,” Aranda said. “While we’ve been eager to play football this fall, we have all made a commitment to only do so with the highest level of safety and care for our student-athletes. We are disappointed for our team, staff, and our fans, but look forward with great anticipation to renewing this rivalry in the future.”
The two former Southwest Conference rivals last played in 1995 at the Houston Astrodome.
There were plenty of connections. Rhoades had been a former AD at Houston, which helped when both schools were left without a game last weekend because of outbreaks at Louisiana Tech and Memphis.
“It was like completing a Hail Mary. That’s what I would equate it to,” Rhoades told SicEm365 Radio earlier this week. “I’m grateful that they’re still at least a few people that still like me and that we have a positive relationship.”
Aranda was going to be reunited with Houston coach Dana Holgorsen. The relationship between the two goes back a couple of decades to Mike Leach’s first season at Texas Tech in 2000 and a very interesting staff.
Aranda was a fresh-faced graduate assistant. Holgorsen was the receivers coach at Tech on a staff that also included Sonny Dykes, Art Briles, Bill Bedenbaugh and Ruffin McNeill.
As Baylor’s staff canceled weekend plans to focus on Houston, Aranda joked that “the coffee is going pretty strong right now.”
Now Baylor will go through the same, all-too-familiar drill for Kansas with a game to be played.
Presumably.
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