Col­orado State’s foot­ball team neared the depar­ture of its short bus dri­ve to Air Force last Wednes­day when the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic once again wreaked hav­oc on the Rams’ season.

Two weeks. Two can­celed games.

“I would say we were lit­er­al­ly 20 min­utes from engag­ing in our meet­ings and walk-throughs, and real­ly just rolling right after that and going (to the game),” Addazio told reporters dur­ing a vir­tu­al Mon­day news con­fer­ence. “We were ready to play, that’s all I can tell you. We were flat ready to play.”

The news dropped less than 24 hours before kick­off that sev­en CSU play­ers and two staff mem­bers test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19, with nine addi­tion­al play­ers quar­an­tined due to con­tact trac­ing, per a state­ment on the school’s coro­n­avirus recov­ery web­site. It was a dif­fi­cult pill to swal­low after the Rams had been unable to host UNLV on Nov. 21 due to a coro­n­avirus out­break among the Rebels.

Addazio did not dis­agree with the lat­est can­cel­la­tion, made in con­junc­tion with the university’s med­ical staff and the Larimer Coun­ty health depart­ment, not­ing that CSU has already played games this year with­out mul­ti­ple starters because of pos­i­tive tests or con­tact trac­ing. The issue last week, Addazio said, was a con­cern over the program’s “over­all pos­i­tiv­i­ty rate.”

“It’s an emo­tion­al roller coast­er,” Addazio said. “We have missed two games in a row, so we’re going to go for three weeks with­out play­ing. You’re prepar­ing your tail off, work­ing hard, invest­ing so much men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. Then it just gets pulled away and you ride this men­tal roller coast­er. It has an effect. I’m not going to tell you it doesn’t. … As a vet­er­an coach, this last one, that was hard.

“The kids start to feel like: What are the odds that we’re real­ly going to play? That’s human nature and I get it. … It’s men­tal­ly fatiguing.”

The Rams (1–2) don’t catch a break upon their return, hope­ful­ly, to play Sat­ur­day at San Diego State (3–3). The Aztecs enter the game fol­low­ing a 10-point loss at Col­orado. SDSU was picked to win the West Divi­sion title this year in a pre­sea­son media poll. (They are an 8‑point favorite).

CSU must prove it is men­tal­ly resilient after not play­ing a foot­ball game in three weeks. The Rams returned to prac­tice on Sunday.

“We’re excit­ed to get on the road and play this foot­ball game,” Addazio said. “I just hope that we can be some­what intact and go out there in a fair­ly full complement.”