Q&A with ASU’s Deputy Athletics Director Jean Boyd

Amid the uncertainty over a fall football season, ASU and the rest of the Power 5 teams continue their preseason preparations. ASU's Deputy Athletics Director Jean Boyd shares with us the various processes and procedures the Sun Devils have endured these last months.

(This interview was conducted Friday, August 7)

DevilsDigest: What has it been like dealing with this extreme challenge of preparing for a football season during a pandemic?

Jean Boyd: "Well, a couple of things. First and foremost, you never feel settled, that's for sure. You don't feel like you're settled or settling in partly because the calendar has been restructured and has been off of what it would have been in a normal quote-unquote, summer. So, voluntary workouts started later (than usual). Mandatory workouts started later. And then obviously over the past couple of weeks, there have been a number of conversations and ultimately, decisions made by the conference about when the season is slated to start, and you work backward from that and assemble your preseason camp schedules and everything else.

"All these things over the past three months have been on the sliding calendar if you will. And as it stands right now, you can't you can't be comfortable that anything's ever locked in. Because the medicine is continuing to evolve, the science is continuing to evolve. COVID-19 remains persistent. So now you don't feel at ease. But I think between certainly the coaching staff but more importantly, our frontline staff, (Sports performance coach) Joe Connolly and his team, (Associate Head Athletic Trainer) Gerry Garcia and his team - what those guys have done, how they've been able to flex and be attentive to change.

"And then, just the massive team conversations and planning sessions and debates that have happened in good spirit with our head team physician, Dr. Shannon Lancaster, campus officials that work in health services that work with the Maricopa County public health officials. Kenny McCarty, who is the head athletic trainer for Sun Devil athletics across all sports. Ken Landphere, who's a senior associate AD and has sport oversight for a bunch of things. At a certain point, as we were trying to prepare and plan and start to execute what we're doing, my bandwidth was so stretched that I had to ask him to run point on some of these return to work out and return to play elements. He's done an incredible job of organizing and coordinating.

"It's been one massive effort. And I think that we will tell you that it's just like people are saying - it's unprecedented times and all. Well, this is unparalleled, in terms of uncertainty, in terms of sudden change, in terms of adapting to change on the fly. I never experienced anything like it in 25-years of college athletics. It's been wild."

DevilsDigest: Are the freshman and upperclassmen alike wide-eyed with everything that is going on right now?

Jean Boyd: "I would say yes because whatever our upperclassmen have felt was the normal or something that they can hang their hat on, from how they've operated in the past, that's all been shifted on them. And even basic, simple things, like the role the locker room plays in football and in football team development. The locker room is just a pass-through right now. It's not a gathering place. It's not a place where you have camaraderie. It's not a place where guys are joking around or talking about life or football or whatever. You change your clothes, and then you get out. Keep it moving.

"So, that's a fair statement that beyond just the newcomers, being wide-eyed and trying to figure out how things work, the veterans are figuring out how things work too. And again, it continues to morph around them on a weekly basis."

DevilsDigest: What's a current typical day for an ASU football player?

Jean Boyd: "So we're in a 20-hour per week window for these two weeks from August 3 until August 17. And so that consists of the day starting in the morning. We do provide breakfast, and It's a socially distanced breakfast. You can grab it and then take it into a space where there's social distance, certainly more than six feet. You can remove your mask, of course, to put food in your mouth. Then typically a meeting where you can't have the whole team together. You have the offense and defense parsed out into their different segments as it relates to positions and all. And then, Coach (Herm) Edwards will address the team in a couple of different segments, whether it be offense and defense or offensive line and quarterbacks, and just however you can keep everybody with the appropriate distance.

"They'll have that meeting with their coach, and then they'll have either a unit meeting. So, you might have, 45 or 50 guys spread out over 160 seats in the in a team room. Again, everyone's masked in that space. So, you have your position meeting time, and you have your unit meeting time. Then there's a walkthrough that is where some teaching time happens. That's outside, and it is masked, coaches included, and socially distanced.

"Four days of the week, there's a weight room workout of some sort that Joe runs that again has all of those socially distanced elements to it. Mask on, hyper-cleansing, sanitation in-between group sets, and so forth. Then that transitions out into probably a conditioning session usually on the practice field outdoors. So, this is all happening before noon, and then, some walkthrough, such as formation type stuff and so forth at the end of the session."

DevilsDigest: Are we still seeing groups of nine players working out at a time?

Jean Boyd: "You got the CDC guidelines. It talks about small groups, but then it says, in some situations educationally you can have groups up to 50 and so forth. We try to keep the guys if they're in closer quarters six feet in between. But we try to keep them podded, meaning with guys that they're around more frequently and so forth. The way that the groups are coming through the weight room, there's more than 10 in there at a single time, but they're spread out across the weight room."

DevilsDigest: There have been no interruptions to the ASU football workouts, correct?

Jean Boyd: "That's accurate."

DevilsDigest: Are all the football players back and working out with the team?

Jean Boyd: "The full team of people who we expect to be here are here. I guess I would say it this way, the likelihood of a student-athlete choosing for whatever number of reasons that they're going to opt-out of this season probably for all of our (Pac-12) institutions is high. The likelihood that you're going to have at least one person is opting out is high. And so, I think as time goes on, people continue to evaluate information that they're receiving from their families and otherwise."

DevilsDigest: And to confirm Aug. 17 is scheduled to be the first day of a fall camp practice that will include sessions with pads eventually?

Jean Boyd: "That's correct. So, there'll be a five-day acclimatization period, and then theoretically, you could have pads but the Pac-12 physicians, which includes some disease experts are meeting regularly during the weeks leading up to that start and are giving advice back every, every couple of days and so forth.

"So that is the targeted, quote-unquote, first day at camp. Like everything else, it won't be like traditional training camp has been in the past if you think about it. We start school that Thursday (Aug. 20). So, the days of Fall camp where you've got unlimited hours, and you can have the guys focus on football only for morning, noon, and night. That's not happening this year. Seven or eight of our schools are semester schools in the Pac-12. Well, yeah. All those schools are going to be starting pretty quickly. And I think it's been agreed that everyone (regardless if they are on a semester or quarter system) going to have a 20-hour limitation."

DevilsDigest: How has the leadership of Herm Edwards shined throughout the last four months?

Jean Boyd: "You had some news come out over the weekend (of Aug. 1) about a group of Pac-12 athletes who were expressing some concerns about a number of different things on a platform. In the time that we're living in, I think trust is incredibly important.

"And I think coach Edwards has done a good job of establishing trust. There's an environment and a culture of trust amongst our team that starts with how Herm has been transparent and honest, and the guys know that he genuinely cares about their welfare, and so that goes a long way in moments like this. Herm is a cool customer as they say. He's not easily flappable. If you come to him and say, hey man, we've got to make this adjustment. It's not going to be an over-emotional reaction or whatever the case is. He's going to internalize and interpret and say 'okay, we're going to do what we got to do.' And we'll make the adjustment. So, his demeanor and his tone, his calm nature, serves us as a football program extremely well during the time that we're living in."

DevilsDigest: How helpful has it been for you to have the resources you have in the medical field despite ASU not having a medical school?

Jean Boyd: "The university's bio-design center is a world-class center. The work that it has done and continues to do around, certainly, understanding and exploring diseases, testing for diseases, doing research to try to impact overall health in our society has been in existence for a decade-plus. And to have that resource in this moment, it means everything to the effort for the university first and foremost, to provide massive and quick and accurate testing, which is what all of us have learned is a critical component of management during the COVID-19 era. Having that resource as a connection to athletics as well as a subset with the university; It's really mind-blowing. The science of it and the volume of what to do in terms of testing and quick turnaround results and so forth. That's been game-changing for the program."

DevilsDigest: As we speak, are women's and men's basketball, volleyball, and soccer the only ASU sports other than football going through preseason preparations on campus?

Jean Boyd: "The fall sports have been approved by the conference to formally engage activities that would lead to preseason practice. So that is for us volleyball, soccer and men's and women's cross country. Then there are other sports that participate in the fall maybe a little bit later, whether they're called winter or spring sports. We've got everything tiered and phased based off of obviously the priority of fall. But then if there are individual student-athletes who are from sports that start later that are local, we feel like the opportunity to work out in our organized, safeguarded, test-provided environment with all of the sanitation efforts and everything else is better than being at a gym, which is out in the public space that isn't governed by the same oversight. And so, we worked to get a number of our other student-athletes through the process of being tested and cleared to work out as well. So, Aug. 15 is the scheduled date where the fall sports, soccer, volleyball and all can start their fall camps, if you will."

DevilsDigest: Has there been a challenge with sports outside of football in bringing international students back into the U.S.?

Jean Boyd: "As of about three weeks ago, there was a whole segment of Europe that the United States had a travel ban on. And of course, our coaches were obviously extremely concerned about how they would even reassemble, the women's golf team (for example). Do we even have one? And thankfully, that travel ban was lifted for students who had the appropriate visas in that window of time. So, over time, those concerns have started to dissipate as the national policy has continued to evolve. There are still a few areas that are on the travel ban list, and it's still more difficult to get here or get back here from some places than others right now. We're trying to support those situations on a case by case basis. But it's certainly been challenging."

DevilsDigest: Is there anything else you would like ASU fans to be aware of regarding the football season?

Jean Boyd: "A month before the slated start of the season is probably when we would be communicating affirmatively and outwardly to fans and donors and others about what the parameters are around fan attendance. So, I think that's probably the only other thing a lot of people have called and asked or sent notes in wanting to know what we're dealing with as far as fan attendance.

"We're looking at those that first week in September. Obviously, what we would say now versus what we might say then could be two different things. So, we want to give ourselves enough time to really understand where we are. But that first week in September, we'd be communicating about the attendance policies."

DevilsDigest: How optimistic are you that you will kick off the 2020 football season with a Territorial Cup game in Tucson on Sept. 26?

Jean Boyd: "We're optimistic. We are optimistically listening every single day, and when I say listening, I mean observing, consuming information, consulting with the professionals. We're consulting with the league, etc. daily to be informed about the marching orders related to the pursuit of competition.

"You watch what's happening in social media. Everyone has opinions about everything. And then, there's a lot of things that are not concrete in terms of the absolute answers for how you should be managing certain situations. In the context of all of that, we've been optimistic about the possibility of having a season, and we'll continue to enact all of the safety measures, obviously, including the testing and if someone were to have a positive test, how we help them manage that results from a medical standpoint and a quarantine standpoint. We're doing all of that with precision and with high intensity to preserve the opportunity to have a season.

"That's where we are and are moving towards a start date with optimism but also with a realistic mindset about the continuing evolution around us. That's the best way I can put it. I'm not trying to be evasive or not say, I feel X percent sure that it's going to happen. We're moving towards it, and we're hopeful that it can happen with as much safety at the forefront of it all. We're going to be informed by the science and the medicine every step of the way."

(Jesse Morrison contributed to this article)