With COVID-19 threatening the fate of college football, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey took to the Dan Patrick Show Tuesday morning to share his thoughts on the SEC’s 2020 football season.
“We have a start date… I’d be encouraged by that. … We have a schedule… I’d be encouraged by that. … We’re still here today. On Sunday, if I read social media I would have thought (it was over),” Sankey said on the show.
Sankey was asked about his feelings in regards to how likely SEC football will be played in the fall.
“It is a roller coaster ride,” said Sankey. “Today is probably better. We have made decisions to avoid some of the time pressures that I sense others are feeling.”
With the Big Ten postponing all fall sports (including football), other conferences have now felt heavy pressure to follow suit. Sankey explained how the SEC has been preparing for their season differently than other Power 5 conferences.
“We’ve not had our players in helmets and pads for full practices,” he said. “We’ve spread our pre-season preparation out. We have moved our kickoff back to allow universities to get back to kind of a normal fall semester order, and some time to have things settle out.”
On the matter of possibly adopting a non-SEC team into the SEC for the season, Sankey replied: “…that’s not quite practical.”
Commissioner of the SEC @GregSankey on whether he'd adopt teams from outside of the Conference for this year's football season.
Watch live: https://t.co/Grp2WQV29s pic.twitter.com/S5dJpKOVdU
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) August 11, 2020
“I felt good on Friday, and then a little tumult over the weekend,” said Sankey on his outlook for the season. “We are going to keep working to see if we can provide opportunities for student-athletes to compete.”
“Every day we learn a little bit more. It is not simply going to be a guiding moment if another conference makes a decision, but a piece of information a lot this journey.”
Sankey said it could be possible, but is unlikely the SEC would play on their own in 2020.
“I don’t think that is the right direction really. Could we? Certainly … We could, if that were the circumstance, operate on our own. I am not sure that’s the wisest direction.”
There is a lot up in the air surrounding this decision, as more and more will unravel in the coming weeks. From the looks of it, Sankey and the SEC leaders will do everything in their power to have football in 2020, but nothing is guaranteed.