For the first time ever, the Oklahoma spring game is going to be played in the evening as head coach Lincoln Riley announced moving the game from Saturday afternoon to Friday night because of the threat of inclement weather all day Saturday.
Originally scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday, kickoff will now be 7:30 on Friday.
“We're gonna play a full half and then the one difference, if you'll remember from last year, we will not come back out,” Riley said. “We're gonna play one full half, the game's gonna end. We may make the quarters a little bit longer than normal, but one full half and then the game's gonna end.”
It’s definitely a little late in the game to make such a drastic move, but the predicted weather forecast threw a wrinkle into things. Riley said he started to monitor things this week. As of Monday evening, the plan was still for a Saturday afternoon game.
However, once the forecast for Saturday was released Tuesday, the wheels started turning on officially moving the event.
“First thing I did was check it and I saw the forecast had gone downhill even a little bit more,” Riley said. “So we started talking just kinda feasibility early, and it just kinda kept growing and growing. We had enough momentum behind it, and it made enough sense to go ahead and do it.”
No doubt after thinking about logistics, the next item becomes about recruiting. Riley’s priority the last two spring games has been to make them as huge as possible.
It paid off in spades last year, and things are looking like an OU recruiting explosion is about to go down again this weekend.
Riley is confident the change won’t throw a wrench into the weekend, but it’s too early to know for sure whether some official or unofficial visitors will no longer be able to make it to Norman.
SoonerScoop.com has confirmed all five OU commits for 2020 are expected to be on hand and around 20 official visits have been set for the weekend.
“It's gonna be awesome,” Riley said. “I think there may be some unofficial guys that maybe weren't gonna be able to come that are gonna be able to come now. We've actually, I think we'll have some response there, all of our official guys, we expect to be here and now they don't have to wait a full day to get a feel of what it's like to be a Sooner.
“They're gonna get off the plane and come right over here and walk into a packed stadium, and the first spring game in history I think at OU under the lights and it's gonna be a great atmosphere and they're gonna have a lot of fun with it.”
Safe to say, Tuesday was one hectic day for Riley and the university trying to piece it all together.
“We can execute it, and that was part of the confidence I think in doing it was from our staff, the athletic department staff as a whole, OUPD, everybody,” Riley said. “It takes a lot of people to change something this big this late in the game, but we've got a lot of great people that wanna make it the best experience for our fans, our players, our recruits as possible.
“That's our main goal. A lot of people are gonna have to work extra hours this week and really grind to get it done, but it's all about making this game special and we thought this was gonna be the best way to do it.”
Day has changed. OU is doing all it can to make sure recruits will be able to arrive on time and enjoy the weekend.
What kind of night can fans expect?
“We're planning on being very similar to what we were last year,” Riley said. “We're gonna have two separate teams. It's gonna be a competitive game. We've got the teams. We'll get those announced pretty quick. We'll have a lot of great guest coaches in, former greats here at OU from many different eras.
“We did a draft with the coaches. We did it that way. Because if the guys pick it, you've got different personnel groupings on both sides that you've gotta be able to fill so we drafted and got it as close as we could to make it a fair game.”
The concert featuring country music singer Lee Brice will still go on as scheduled as well. Brice will begin his set at 6:30, an hour before the game. All gates will open 5:30.
