Utah AD Mark Harlan Provides Update On Status For UCLA Game

Nov 10, 2020, 10:32 AM

Utah athletic director Mark Harlan (Courtesy of James Wooldridge, Deseret News)

(Courtesy of James Wooldridge, Deseret News)

KSL Sports

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Utah Athletic Director Mark Harlan provided an update on the status for the Utes’ Saturday night game against the UCLA Bruins.

The football team continues to test daily and is monitoring the results to see if they will have enough players to meet the minimum requirements set by the Pac-12 to play a football game.

“More good results in our daily COVID testing with football,” Harlan wrote on Twitter. “We continue to push ahead and prepare for our game vs. UCLA this Saturday, with hopes for more negative test results throughout the week. The focus, as always, is to follow the leadership of our medical professionals.”

More good results in our daily Covid testing with Football. We continue to push ahead and prepare for our game vs UCLA this Saturday, with hopes for more negative test results throughout the week. The focus, as always, is to follow the leadership of our medical professionals.

— Mark Harlan (@MarkHarlan_AD) November 10, 2020

Utah’s season opener against Arizona on Saturday, November 7 was canceled due to multiple positive COVID-19 tests on Friday from the football team. The Pac-12 declared the game a no contest.

Kyle Whittingham met with the media on Monday and said that the team is taking it day-by-day and they “barely” have enough players to play in the game on Saturday.

“Barely, we’re right on the borderline and the difference this week is we do have extra time to try to prepare some guys that really have been getting zero reps because of their status on the depth chart. Whereas when it happened last Friday, we were under the threshold as well. But we also didn’t have time, there’s no practice left to try to get some of the walk-ons up to speed. It was just an impossible situation. At least this week, we don’t have very many more players of any at our disposal we had last week. At least we have time to try to get some guys trained up as best as we can.”

Utah and UCLA are scheduled to kickoff in the Rose Bowl on Saturday, November 14 at 8:30 p.m. MT on FOX.

Trevor Allen is a Utah Utes Insider for KSLSports.com and host of the Crimson Corner podcast. Follow him on Twitter: @TrevorASports. You can download and listen to the podcast, here.