The past couple days have cast more doubt about the 2020 college football season. While the coronavirus pandemic has delayed parts of college football the biggest impact, to date, occurred earlier this week.
Both the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences announced they will only play conference games this season. In addition, the Ivy League, who was the first conference to cancel their basketball tournament when this all began, pushed their season to the spring.
With these cancellations’ other conferences schedules have been impacted and has created even more questions about the viability of a season.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey joined Marty Smith and Ryan McGee on Saturday morning’s episode of their show. Sankey said his concern about having a 2020 football season is, “high to very high,” and that “we are running out of time to correct and get things right.”
“We put a medical advisory group together in early April with the question, ‘What do we have to do to get back to activity?’ and they’ve been a big part of the conversation,” Sankey said. “But the direct reality is not good and the notion that we’ve politicized medical guidance of distancing, and breathing masks, and hand sanitization, ventilation of being outside, being careful where you are in buildings. There’s some very clear advice about — you can’t mitigate and eliminate every risk, but how do you minimize the risk? … We are running out of time to correct and get things right, and as a society we owe it to each other to be as healthy as we can be.”
After his comments made the rounds, he took to Twitter to respond.
Yep…that’s exactly what I said…and have been saying. I want to provide the opportunity for college athletics to be part of the fall, but we need to all consider our behavior to make possible what right now appears very difficult. “The direct reality is not good…” https://t.co/z3pHGeMIa9
— Greg Sankey (@GregSankey) July 11, 2020
Sankey also reiterated that the SEC’s deadline on a decision remains late July and every day gives them more information before they make their decision.
“That’s why I don’t feel any pressure because of somebody else’s decisions,” Sankey said. “We’re trying to make the right decisions for us, for the Southeastern Conference. It does have an impact because I’ve said publicly we’re all linked nationally, so when other people make decisions, yup, there’s an impact, but also we’re going to look at our situation and make a decision that’s appropriate for the Southeastern Conference and most importantly for the health of our student-athletes.
“The reality right now is the trends in our region, and in our nation, are not in the positive direction for being able to have normal experiences.”