SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Utah State head coach Gary Andersen said that he’s planning on an “aggressive camp” to prepare his football team for the start of the 2020 season amid the coronavirus pandemic.

On September 24, the Mountain West Conference voted for its teams, including Utah State, to play an eight-game schedule this fall. The announcement reversed the Conference’s decision on August 10, to postpone all fall sports, including football.

After the Mountain West’s decision to restart the season, Andersen spoke with reporters about his staff’s upcoming plans to prepare the team for the start of the season on October 24.

“Friday night five o’clock ish, we’re gonna tee it off for 100 plus snaps,” Andersen said. “I don’t think it’s any more threat to a young man to go out and tackle versus having a normal football practice. I don’t understand why COVID would be more of an issue if you’re tackling or if you’re not tackling or you’re hitting and you’re going face to face and doing what they’re doing in football. So for our kids, we’re going to be aggressive. We’re going to handle this aggressive camp. Our goal is to get tougher, and we’ve talked about that all the way from January until now and we need to continue that process and that has to do with big scrimmages coming our way and physical practices. So we’re looking forward to that but also being very careful with the lack that they’ve had in strength training and conditioning.”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by KSL Sports (@kslsports) on Sep 25, 2020 at 4:29pm PDT

The USU head coach also spoke about excitement that the players and coaches have now that a start date has been announced for the 2020 season.

“Obviously, the kids are extremely excited. We’re all excited as coaches. So I’m sure Aggie Nation is excited,” Andersen said. “It’s gonna be interesting as we go through time here and see exactly how it all filters out. But the bottom line is, these young men are going to have the opportunity to be able to compete, and it’s going to be different but we now get to take the next step.”

According to the Mountain West, the schedules for the conference’s football teams are “forthcoming.” The conference will play an eight-game schedule.

WE'RE BACK. pic.twitter.com/kZTEGDJXPz

— Mountain West (@MountainWest) September 25, 2020

Along with the October 24 start date, the conference slated its championship game for December 19.