OU Football Moves Its Season Opener A Week Earlier Than Expected

University of Oklahoma Athletic Director Joe Castiglione announced Saturday that the football team's season opener against Missouri State will be moved up one week.

The Sooners will host the Missouri State Bears on Saturday, August 29. Broadcast information, game day procedures and potential stadium capacity limits will be announced in the coming weeks.

The university said Saturday that the NCAA accepted a waiver request filed on behalf of both Oklahoma and Missouri State to move its matchup "to allow them more schedule flexibility in addressing potential issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic."

"If the season is indeed permitted to start as scheduled, the benefit of extra time between games will help our teams manage any variety of possible circumstances that may occur," Castiglione said in a statement. "Our original schedule had an open date between the second and third games, so now we will have a span of five weeks to play three games. It provides us a more gradual approach to safely manage the conditions of these unprecedented times. We're thankful to Missouri State for their cooperation during this process and to the NCAA for allowing both teams to start the season a week earlier."

In addition to the Missouri State game, Oklahoma plans to host Tennessee (Sept. 12) and face Army (Sept. 26) at West Point, N.Y. in nonconference competition.

While conferences such as the Big Ten, Pac-12 and Atlantic Coast decided to cancel nonconference competition for the fall semester, the Big 12 Conference has yet to make a final decision on playing nonconference football games.