Toledo football coping with MAC's postponement of season

MAC university presidents postponed the fall sports season on Saturday.

By Brian Buckey / The Blade
Mon, 10 Aug 2020 17:51:19 GMT

University of Toledo football coach Jason Candle looks at the coronavirus outbreak through a different lens than a typical college head coach.

Candle, while asymptomatic, experienced the disease first hand after becoming the first NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision coach to disclose a positive diagnosis. He self-isolated for 10 days before returning to his offseason coaching duties.

"You certainly don't brag that you had the virus," Candle said during a news conference Monday outside Savage Arena. "You're walking around your own neighborhood, and sometimes it feels like you have the scarlet letter on your chest. ... I'm not trying to make light of the situation. This is a serious deal. Fortunately, I was asymptomatic through the whole thing. I know that is not some people's experience with it and isn't what they dealt with. You go through your quarantine period and every time one of your kids sneezes or coughs, you are on pins and needles. That's an uncomfortable situation for anyone.”

Shortly after Candle did come back to the team, Mid-American Conference university presidents voted unanimously to postpone the fall sports season, leaving the football program hoping for some kind of spring season in a best-case scenario.

Soon after the news was delivered to the players Saturday, Candle looked out onto the field and a large group of players were out getting in a workout.

"That's who they are, and that's who they continue to be,” Candle said. “That's the kind of guys we'll continue to recruit to our football program."

Candle voiced frustration about the nature of following safety protocols during the offseason.

"Everything that a team is supposed to be is together,” he said. “You want to eat together. You want to have meetings together. You want to do everything together and what this has forced us to do is be very individualized. You come in in the morning, and you come dressed for a lift. You lift, you work out, you throw your laundry in the thing, and then no one sees you until 7 a.m. the next day. So you are really at a crossroads of everything that goes against what building a team looks like."

Candle said he has continued to lean on the team's leaders, such as senior offensive lineman Bryce Harris, and valued the players' input just as he would an assistant coach.

Some players had reservations about playing football during a pandemic — some players from around the country to the point of opting out of a potential season, Candle said.

Harris admitted he had doubts, but he said the overall feeling of the team was it wanted to play this fall.

"All of our staff — all of our coaches, strength coaches, and trainers — did a great job of protecting us and keeping us safe,” Harris said at the same news conference. “In terms of fear, when it comes to our facilities and our practices, I wasn't necessarily as worried as the outside factors — people not wearing masks when you go to stores and just the outside environment outside of being with each other at the practice facility."

Having already experienced the virus, Candle said he didn't want any of his players to have to deal with that on top of the normal responsibilities of school and football. While saying he was asymptomatic, Candle didn’t elaborate as to whether he experienced any health issues from the virus.

"That's a tough situation for anyone to go through, let alone a young man that has the pressure to say, 'Hey I need to get back for my team,’" Candle said. "I need to get back out there, or I will lose my spot or someone might pass me on the depth chart if I miss time. That's a difficult thing...There is still a virus out there and challenges that go along with it in our day-to-day routine, let alone school and football added to it. We just have to do the best we can to be there for the kids."

Harris said the players haven't lost motivation based on the conference's decision.

"We're all just hungry," Harris said. "We only got a little bit of a taste of spring ball, and that was taken away from us. It's not like some big controversy happened or some scandal or anything like that. This is COVID-19, and this is a pandemic. We understand it, but when it is time to play, we are excited, and we will be ready."

Candle hopes everyone within the program can pause and step back and reflect on what football means in this challenging situation.

"Let's put it into perspective like this: at some point in time, football is going to be taken away from everybody in that locker room," Candle said. "They are going to be told they can't play anymore or they are not good enough to play. They are going to get cut by their favorite NFL team. They are going to have football stripped from them. Now they had it stripped from them this fall. This may be a preview of what's to come down the road. If we look at it like that and know that we are going to get football back and these kids are still going to get their opportunity to play and compete, maybe this is a good time for us to sit back and get a little bit of a foreshadowing of what life is like after this is all said and done."

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