Why aren’t we hearing more about COVID-19 from SEC coaches?

Today Florida said that they had 7 COVID-19 cases on their team, up from six from last week.

The news silenced practice for today – not great news for Dan Mullen’s team that start the season against Ole Miss on September 26th.

Right now, practice is important.

Earlier on, Ed Orgeron said about COVID-19: “”I think most — not all of our players — but most of our players have caught it… I think hopefully they don’t catch it again and hopefully they’re not out for games… I’m not going to say all of them…. But some players have caught it. I don’t know the percentage. Hopefully, that once you catch it, you don’t get it again.” Orgeron declined to talk about actual numbers.

We know that COVID-19 has annihilated depth charts. Tennessee had to cancel a scrimmage at Neyland Stadium because there weren’t enough players. Positive cases aren’t the problem so much as NCAA rules which dictate that positive players and those who are in higher risk of getting the disease have to be quarantined. Auburn has had practices decimated because of positive cases and quarantine rules too.

While players are tested three times a week – Alabama head coach Nick Saban made a point of this on a recent press conference  – but no other coach has talked about how many positive cases there have been.

You can understand this happening in a way because we are just about to hit the season, and coaches don’t want to give their opposition anything going forward.

Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley said recently that the team will not disclose how many positive tests there have been on his team, and the competitive disadvantage was the reason. “Just like we would with an injury, we made the decision to not broadcast that. I know we’ve been probably the most transparent school in the country up until then, but you don’t want to give your team a competitive disadvantage, so we’re not going to do that”.

You could argue that the students have a right to know how many of the team are affected. I’m sure that the school presidents wouldn’t mind telling people, because if it’s a small number, they look as though they run a tight ship, and if it’s a large number, then they can use it to tell kids to socially distance and behave themselves.

The SEC fans won’t matter to the schools, because they will root for their team regardless. And the sponsors will continue to sponsor and the TV networks will continue to show their games.

GOING GREEN

Ironically, the people who are mostly going to be impacted are from Vegas.

In a world where the quick buck is becoming more and more important – especially in a climate where people are desperate for quick cash (that’s what happens in a recession!) – gambling is a bigger and bigger market. Only recently ESPN announced a partnership with DraftKings. Various sportswriters have deals with betting sites, and even yours truly talks about the lines of different games.

And because of COVID-19, no-one should take a line – rather like this season itself – that seriously. Because even if Alabama is a 31-point favorite against Missouri on September 26th (we actually think Alabama -21.5 is a pretty good shout!), no-one knows about how many players have been lost to practice because Nick Saban won’t want you asking. The same goes for all the schools. It’s led to uncertainty about who the starting quarterbacks are and everything else to go with the game. We also don’t know how many practices have gone the way of Tennessee’s or Florida’s and have had to be cancelled.

Of course, a team who’s practiced more will have the advantage – even a mild one – over a side that doesn’t.

We particularly saw this from a tackling point-of-view in the BYU vs Navy game of a couple of weeks’ ago, when The Mormons annihilated the Midshipmen – ostensibly because Navy didn’t allow tackling during any of its practice sessions.

And although we know that teams out of the gate will be rusty (unless you’re Alabama), it should be fascinating to see what lines get crossed-up and those that don’t.

For the record, one of the great lines out there for SEC football will be about how many games might get cancelled or postponed because of COVID-19. Despite a great number of games getting postponed or cancelled because of the virus, the only all-conference game that has had to be moved was Virginia and Virginia Tech in the ACC.

Like any forward-thinking football fan, I’m going for 2.