It’ll be a vastly different couple of weeks for Auburn leading up to this year’s bowl game against Northwestern compared to years past.

Usually, teams begin to practice a couple of weeks before the game and will fly to the city of the respective bowl game a week before the game.

They’ll spend that week practicing and exploring the city. Last year, Auburn spent time attending hockey games and having Bloomin’ Onion eating contests prior to the Outback Bowl.

This year, bowl practice will begin on Dec. 26 and the team will travel to Orlando on Dec. 30 or Dec. 31, just a few days before the New Year’s Day matchup.

“Our players left a week ago and the schedule was a little bit flexible,” interim head coach Kevin Steele said. “The COVID testing and when you can bring them back and how long they've been and the quarantine and all that has backed our practice schedule up a little bit where we've got some challenges in that we're not coming back to practice until the 26th, which is pretty close to gameday after having been gone for a week already.”

After a lengthy season, Steele felt it was important for the players to have some extra time off to enjoy the holidays.

“Then it'll be another week. It just didn't marry in terms of from the COVID testing, the quarantining, getting all the tests back from the lab and then having enough time around the Christmas Eve-Christmas -- we felt like our players needed very much so to be at home Christmas Eve and Christmas in light of what all they've been through this year. Any year you want to make that happen, but certainly this year. So we're going to adapt and make it work the best we can with the schedule we've got.”

While Auburn’s players left campus a week ago, Northwestern still has its players on campus as they’re just a day removed from playing Ohio State in the Big 10 title game.

Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald says the Wildcats will get back to practice on Wednesday and Thursday before taking Christmas off and then transitioning to a game week plan on Saturday.

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