What USC AD Mike Bohn, Pac-12 leaders said about details of football season

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Minutes after the Pac-12 completed its media webinar Thursday night to address the big news of the day regarding the conference's return to football on Nov. 6, USC athletic director Mike Bohn held his own Zoom call with reporters to provide further insight and clarity on what had unfolded.

When will USC start practicing? What exactly has changed with the state and county public health guidelines currently posing an obstacle to holding full team practices? What does this mean for the Pac-12's chances at College Football Playoff consideration? How do the new Quidel testing machines work? Why not start Oct. 31? Etc.

We break down all of the key comments from Bohn, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott and University of Oregon President and chair of the Pac-12 CEO Group Michael Schill.

Bohn: "The first part is we'll have a calendar, and we have to now -- and we've probably already done it as a league -- we have to inform the NCAA that we're going to have our season, we've declared our season, which will now allow us to build our calendar and the number of practices to prepare. So we'll be going through a 20-hour work week if you will for our student-athletes up until training camp starts, and then we'll have a different schedule there getting ready to prepare with the number of practices, required off days, all the traditional pieces that you would have seen us execute will be the exact same with a new calendar. But I do not anticipate us actually being on the practice field as a team until early October and being able to meet that deadline to play. So we're a ways from that, but I'm just thrilled with the way the young men on our team have continued to work out and do all the different things that they were doing."

**Presently, college teams in California can only work out in groups of 6-12 and those groups cannot intermingle with other groups. This has been the chief barrier to USC, UCLA, Stanford and Cal having football practice. The cohort guideline has not yet been changed, but a confidence level from discussions with state and county leaders that it will have spurred the Pac-12's ultimate decision.**

Bohn: "That's still a work in progress and we don't have every single aspect of this buttoned up yet, so we have some work to do there. Again, they are great listeners, but they also have a full plate of issues. But we're confident we have wonderful relationships with them, and again I think that's a good example of being able to partner with UCLA and how valuable that was here in Los Angeles."

Bohn was asked a follow-up regarding whether there is an agreed-upon minimum standard to be functional at practice.

Bohn: "No, but we've had candid conversations with them, and I think that's where our administration really -- from other areas of campus to include the athletic department -- were really on the forefront of that with the league and helping others in the state, and I'm proud that USC took the lead on pulling all that together. We don't have all those specifics yet, but we have enough confidence in our dialogue and engagement with them that we're going to have something that works well."

Scott was asked what schools in the conference are still limited in what ways.

Scott: "There's been a lot of good communication back and forth with public health authorities over the last week -- on an ongoing basis over the last months of course, but over the last week updates to the guidance. So exactly when each school can resume practice still will need to be cleared between each school and their local public health authority. We've received comfort and clarifications that are very, very helpful, in terms of the confidence to move forward, but there are still some exact details to work out on a school by school basis."

Bohn: "The machines arrived on Wednesday, and got our training and practice on those and tried to begin to work with Student Health, which is going to be a wonderful partner in helping us execute those machines. We're learning that they produce approximately -- don't hold me to this -- 30-50 tests per hours. So it's not like you can just go in and everybody gets tested on the football team in an hour. And obviously we have some other student-athletes and staff that we'll test as well, but the machines are here, we're learning, and maybe that's another great result of the timing of not playing until November that we could assure we're buttoned-up and on target with all the different expectations there."

Dr. Doug Aukerman, Chair of the Pac-12 Student-Athlete Health & Well-Being Initiative: "It's not a simple, simple process. You have to get the readers and you have to have some formal training, and the people that are going to be running the tests have to be signed off and cleared to run the tests. And then there is some efficiencies to the process of testing. You have to try to get capacity to try to get 120 or 140 tests done in a short period of time, so you're absolutely right and that's part of why we've been able to build in, the fact that we've got the machines on our campuses and we are undergoing the training process currently, and we will be doing troubleshooting and making sure we are doing the tests correctly and accurately so we can trust the results when we do get them."