Tulsa is supposed to play Toledo in Chapman Stadium on Saturday, September 5.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent “stay at home” orders, no one is certain if that game will be played on schedule.

The challenge for TU coach Philip Montgomery and other college football coaches is how to prepare for those opening games if the pandemic stretches into the summer. Spring drills were halted at TU and football players went home. And they don’t have access to public  practice.facilities.

“We still had access to gyms,” Montgomery said of his summers as a player. “You could still go up to your high school. You could still go to a gym in town. You could still had the availability of going to a facility to work out. The difference now is that those guys, even if they wanted to, they don’t have that luxury.

“That’s where the difference comes in. When they get back, you are going to have to spend a whole lot more time just making sure that you are getting them into the right shape and they are ready to play because you don’t want to risk making that thing go so fast that you are risking injury more often because of it.”

Montgomery and his staff is limited on how much time they can spend with players during this hiatus.

“We are giving them helpful hints,” Montgomery said in an interview with Bruce Howard. “I guarantee you that we are doing that. You do have to fine tune in unique ways. We have to continue to keep developing those and guys have to do a good job of communicating what they have that we can use to help them facilitate their workouts and things like that. They get a new workout sheet every week and as things change and adjust, we can change and adjust with them.”

Weight training – especially for recruits just out of high school – is critical in football. Lifting weights and running are typically high on the list of off-season workouts.

“Some guy may have access to some version of weights or a lot of weights depending on what they have,” Montgomery said. “And then there are other guys that have no access to any of that.”

Those players can run to stay to get in football shape.

“They have a road, whether it’s paved or dirt or gravel – they’ve got some kind of road in front of them that they can go out and run and work on,” Montgomery said.  “From a weight standpoint, you’ve got to be creative. I mean, if you live in the country, you go lift hay bales.

“You’ve got to do that. If you’ve got a five-gallon bucket, or if you’ve got a duffel bag around you can fill with rocks or sand or some type of water or liquid – or if you’ve just got a big dog or a little brother or little sister, you pick them up and here you go, you start lifting those.

“You have to find unique ways and be open to understand that it’s different – it doesn’t have to be bad, it’s just different.”

Not only do the players have to be concerned about conditioning but they must continue their studies online instead of in a classroom.

“Obviously, it was going to be a new transition for us,” Montgomery said. “More importantly, we wanted to make sure that everybody had the technology or in a place that had the technology so that they could still be successful. I think our university has done a good job with guys that didn’t have laptops, that didn’t have that capability – we’ve been able to issue those things out and loan them. Obviously, there is a little bit more need than what we had. And we’ve had to continue to go out and raise some funds and try to manufacture some laptops and things for guys to be able to use to facilitate this online learning. We are still working through that process. Most of our guys are at a better capability now than they were.”

Even though the players may have access to a computer, they could be stuck without high-speed Internet access.

“Even if you are like me, growing up in an itty-bitty small town, the wi-fi accessibility out there is not always great,” Montgomery said. “So you’ve got to be able to make some adjustments and do what you’ve got to do. And we want to make sure that we are giving them all the tools to be successful, knowing that it’s going to be different and unique. Yet as things happen, let’s talk about it, let’s communicate. Let’s figure out ways we can make it better. That’s what week one was really about. I think our guys are handling it much better as we’ve maneuvered our way through week one and week two.”

Maybe the worst aspect is not knowing what is coming and how to plan.

“It’s a unique situation that none of us have ever gone through something like this,” Montgomery said. “I think our players are doing a great job trying to maintain some type of normalcy through this.  Obviously with everything moving online, there’s a lot of adjustments I had to make pretty quick. But you have to take your hat off to our administration and our faculty  and our students. As quickly as this happened, they made some great adjustments.

“We are all obviously working remotely from home or from wherever we are. We are finding new and unique ways of being able to handle this – to stay connected and stay informed. I have learned more on the computer in the last three weeks than I have in a long time – some new facets that we had to install to make sure that we could stay connected to our players. And that we as a staff could stay connected.

“Our most important concern right now is their safety and them staying on top of what they have got to do in the classroom. That transition has been pretty good but we are still fighting battles and jumping hurdles every day.”