Dabo Swinney is confident and optimistic about how the U.S. will overcome the COVID-19 pandemic. But he’s not exactly doing his best to help out. The Clemson Tigers coach spoke to reporters about his thoughts on how the NCAA should handle the start of the 2020 college football season.
“My preference is let’s get to work and go play,” Swinney said, via ESPN. “That’s the best-case scenario, and I think that’s what’s going to happen. I don’t have any doubt. I have zero doubt that we’re going to be playing and the stands are going to be packed.”
Swinney said he’ll continue to prepare as if his team is going to start their season in late-August or early-September. He’s deploying the T.I.G.E.R.S. slogan: “This Is Gonna End Real Soon.” What he’s not doing is self-quarantining at home. Swinney has been traveling by private plane with his family to a vacation home in Florida, and he has plans to travel again for Easter.
“The plane was sanitized,” he said. “We don’t have any concern.”
He probably should have some concern. Maybe South Carolina hasn’t called a state-wide stay-at-home warning (though parts of the state, Charleston and Columbia, have called for it), but 41 other states have done so, including Florida. When Swinney and his family leave their Florida home to head back to South Carolina, they will be violating that state-government plea, which is in place to help the nation recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Swinney remarks and actions seem to indicate he’s not taking the situation as seriously as he should. Perhaps his optimism is based in a misunderstanding of the severity of the situation.
The country’s top infectious disease doctor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is in disbelief that the entire nation isn’t currently in stay-at-home mode.
“You know, the tension between federally mandated versus states’ rights to do what they want is something I don’t want to get into,” Fauci said, via CBS News. “If you look at what’s going on in this country, I just don’t understand why we’re not doing that. We really should be. I don’t understand why that’s not happening.”
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