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Coronavirus In Sports: Philadelphia College Football Coaches Finding Silver Lining In Uncertain Times

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- While the sports world is on pause because of the coronavirus pandemic, the coaches have a lot of time on their hands. Local college football coaches recently spoke with CBS3 to discuss how they're handling it.

There's still about five months until the start of the college football season. But locally, some coaches are still uncertain about where they stand in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.

"This is much bigger than sports. Obviously, this is something that the entire world is dealing with and sports obviously take a back seat to that," Penn State head coach James Franklin said. "I want to make sure even when we're having our Zoom meetings to go over spring installations and things like that, we should be spending some time making sure these guys are all right, their families are all right."

Villanova head coach Mark Ferrante was able to find a small silver lining.

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"This is an opportunity for everyone to have more quality family time as well as trying to stay safe," Ferrante said. "But I think we will start getting into some meetings with the coaches and positional guys and start transitioning pretty soon into football conversation as well."

Temple head coach Rod Carey also spoke about his athletes taking the proper precaution.

"I have not run into where one of our kids has not taken it serious," Carey said. "When you get football taken away from you and you're told to go home and parents are saying come home, we might have some squirrelly 18- to-22-year-olds for sure, but I haven't run into that."

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While there is obviously no firm timeline to return to football activities, there has been no move to cancel any games as of yet.

All three teams are slated to kick off on Sept. 5.

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