SEC Issues Statement on 2020 Football Season
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SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey released a statement on the status of football in the fall of 2020.
The league, which put out all ten games for each of the 14 member institutions on Friday night, was blindsided, insiders said, with reports that the Big Ten might not play this fall.
“Best advice I’ve received since COVID-19: ‘Be patient. Take time when making decisions. This is all new & you’ll gain better information each day,’” Sankey said in a tweet. “The SEC has been deliberate at each step since March...slowed return to practice...delayed 1st game to respect start of fall semester…..Developed testing protocols...We know concerns remain. We have never had a FB season in a COVID-19 environment. Can we play? I don’t know. We haven’t stopped trying. We support, educate and care for student-athletes every day, and will continue to do so...every day.”
As Dawg Post reported on Sunday, skepticism was starting to creep around college football. Here is a legthy excerpt from that premium article:
ATHENS - The most critical few weeks in the last 100 years of college football have arrived. The SEC and college football appeared to have momentum to move forward with the season on Friday night. That abruptly ended Saturday.
All through the league different schools have taken different paths to the start of football, or what they thought the start of football would be. But during phone calls to put together this edition of What We Are Hearing, Dawg Post was told Friday night by an SEC assistant that skepticism was already creeping into his program.
“I still think there's a pretty good chance we don't play,” he said.
It was hard to process. Didn’t the SEC just take a huge step forward? Only a matter of hours earlier the SEC announced the two teams that everyone was going to play in addition to the previous eight known teams.
For the first time in some time things appeared to be looking up. But that might have been on the surface as there was already doubt creeping back onto campuses around the league.
A source at another school, this one in the SEC East, said Friday night that football was likely over for the fall.
“100% no football,” was the comment. “The NCAA (is) going to shut it down.”
Friday night that seemed dramatic, but it seemed much more possible on Saturday.
Added another SEC coach on Friday night: “They are going to get into a position where they are going to be told not to play. I think the Pac 12 wants to shut down, but they don't want to be the first one to do it.”
Midwestern schools would be the first to step into the fray. The MAC forced the issue and closed down from what reports say is a lack of funding for testing.
Meanwhile, the SEC said in a statement that it would be testing players twice a week, and using an outside party to do so. Multiple sources, used to the shenanigans of football in the SEC, thought the outside testing would remove all doubt about the health of players, or the manipulation of some schools.
“That’s the hard part for people who are trying to cheat,” said one SEC football coach. “I don't know how you can with the testing being third party.”
But the move by the MAC, and Big Ten presidents pressing pause on moving forward with practices for the time being on Saturday is a major step back for a sport that is trying to move forward with something that resembles a college football season. Even with the internal knife fighting that is five power conferences, the thousands of players, hundreds of coaches and administrators and a gaggle of governors - putting a product on the field is proving a very challenging task.
The SEC hasn’t even released a schedule for the fall yet. Uncertainty is widespread about how colleges themselves are going function in the fall. Numerous colleges are staggering dorm move-in times for students, and giving parents an allotted amount of time to be in the dorms before mom and dad must say goodbye for good this semester. The looming move in of hundreds of thousands of students across the SEC into Athens, Auburn, Gainesville and beyond is yet another challenge for the league to deal with.
SEC teams have been in modified bubbles since their return to practices in the middle of the summer. But a new reality is coming. College kids are coming back to campus.
The SEC hasn’t made much news on COVID-19 infections this summer. Several schools, like UGA, simply are not releasing numbers regarding infections. Others - including several Big Ten schools - have had to stop voluntary practices because of outbreaks.
Some SEC schools have been meeting at their stadiums in groups so as to not have the entire team in once space at one time.
“Any time we meet our guys are given masks if the guys don't have them,” said one SEC insider. “We have had such high standards, but I don’t know if other folks are doing the same thing.”
Another put a possible shutdown this way:
“I think it is a game of chicken to show superiority. I think our kids, right now, are in better hands with us than at home,” he said. “We've been pretty adamant about doing what you are supposed to be doing.”
Another: “Our head strength guy is all over this thing where if we are not going to play we need to know that, and we don’t need to start practicing because you are asking for trouble if you do that.”
Still, the NCAA’s medical chief cast skepticism on the possibility of college football this fall the same day the SEC updated its plans for the fall.
“Almost everything would have to be perfectly aligned to continue moving forward,” Brian Hainline, who is the NCAA’s chief medical officer said Friday. The next day cracks started appearing for the sport.
Cancellation of the fall season, which is a very real possibility right now, would have sweeping ramifications, and a slew of if-then scenarios for everyone involved. Questions are flowing about such a change. Answers are at a premium.
Could a national champion legitimately be crowned if only the SEC, ACC and Big 12 played? Would Disney and the College Football Playoff suspend the event until the spring if the Big Ten and Pac-12 choose to stay at home?
Would the SEC “go it alone” with no one else playing nationally? That seems hard to imagine. That feels like a negotiating tactic that has lost steam.
If the season is cancelled or significantly postponed this week, does that mean teams can continue to practice during the fall?
How would postponing the season affect the SEC? College sports’ most powerful conference is scheduled to start practices on Monday August 17th. Would the league cancel before that time, or just postpone?
How would the Big Ten manage a postponed season? Further, how would the Big Ten navigate spring football? The average high temperature in March in Ann Arbor is 46; Minneapolis is 42. The lows are 27 and 24. Starting play in April is pushing the ball down the road a long, long way - making the window for a season tough to handle.
Domes are available in places like Detroit and Minneapolis, but the bulk of that league would be forced to wait until temperatures are manageable to start play. What that would do to a schedule is hard to know.
Would leagues stay with ten-game schedules, or attempt to go back to a more normal approach?
Spring football, realistically, would have to end before June. Would schools, particularly in the ACC and Big Ten want to take away attention from March Madness and conference tournaments?
Would high-level players, like Justin Fields and Trevor Lawrence, really play in the spring? That seems hard to imagine. Would Jamie Newman? Would Richard LeCounte? Would Zamir White? Fields and Lawrence seem like certain goners, who else would follow?
Would the NFL Draft be pushed back, and would that matter in terms of decisions for those players?
If there is no college football this fiscal year, how will athletic departments make up for that lack of revenue? Will the salaries of head coaches be slashed (this is the fear that at least one head coach in the SEC has expressed to other coaches)? How many workers in athletic departments will have to be laid off or furloughed to manage the problem? Will those job departures become permanent?
How will the future of college athletics - specifically as it relates to college football head coach contracts - be changed?
Will signing day be moved?
And the biggest question of all: Will things be better in the spring, or will cases spike once more? Will a vaccine, and a nationwide effort to get as many Americans vaccinated, be developed and successful in enough time to have a spring season? What if the vaccine has to be delivered with two doses separated over a matter of weeks? Would that cause further delay, or could you move forward after the first part of the application of the vaccine?
The fall has not been canceled - that’s the critical thing to keep in mind as we move further into August. But there is no doubt that things are hanging by a thread right now. The loss of the Big Ten in the fall, for many insiders, might be too much for the sport to handle.
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