Third time's the charm? Utes will try to start their season against USC. - Salt Lake Tribune

Clay Helton is an optimist.

Keep in mind, for the second week in a row, the Utes had their season opener cancelled because of a COVID-19 outbreak. The Utes didn’t have enough players to meet the Pac-12′s 53-player threshold. More specifically, Utah announced Friday that there are 17 people in the football program that have COVID-19, plus another 11 in quarantine as a result of contact tracing.

Helton knew all of this. Furthermore, Utes athletic director Mark Harlan offered nothing firm on the USC game, only saying the football program would administer antigen and PCR tests over the weekend before deciding how to proceed.

“I’m hoping we get the opportunity to have a chance to compete with Utah,” Helton said. “It looks like it’s headed in that direction. Let’s say our prayers and hopefully both teams will stay safe and stay trending toward the same direction.”

USC football has had little, if any COVID-19 trouble. On Monday, the Trojans athletic department announced two positive cases over the past week, neither person is on the football team.

Later Monday, Jon Wilner of The Mercury News reported that Utah would return to practice in the afternoon. That bit of news would seem to indicate that testing on Saturday and Sunday went well, or at least well enough to plow forward.

One might deduce that the Utah athletic department has its COVID-19 outbreak under control. Things already seemed headed that way after Harlan said Friday that the football program registered zero positive tests Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, before having one on Friday.

That one positive Friday test, and the contact tracing that came along with it, cost Utah the UCLA game, but one positive test in the four-day span should be considered a gigantic win following an outbreak.

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“I still think there’s a lot to play for,” Harlan said Friday. “There’s a USC team coming in next week that we’re going to do everything we can to turn this thing around, and we have games after that. We don’t know how many games are going to be played in our conference. We’re certainly rooting for everyone to play every week, believe me. I still believe, as I sit here, there’s a lot to play for, we just have to get this virus out of our program to be able to participate.”

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Third time's the charm? Utes will try to start their season against USC. - Salt Lake Tribune
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