News is changing on a daily basis these days following the outbreak of the coronavirus but be that as it may, while the Southeastern Conference may have canceled all spring sports on Tuesday, the league’s commissioner isn’t ready to pull the plug on spring practice around the conference.

Here is the statement released by the SEC on Tuesday, which not only canceled spring sports but canceled all SEC football spring games.

“The SEC has announced all regular season conference and non-conference competitions are cancelled for remainder of the 2019-20 athletic year, including all Spring FB Games and remaining SEC championship events, due to continuing developments related to the coronavirus.”

In addition to that statement, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey issued this statement along with the news:

“This is a difficult day for all of us, and I am especially disappointed for our student-athletes. The health and well-being of our entire conference community is an ongoing priority for the SEC as we continue to monitor developments and information about the COVID-19 virus.”

A day later, Sankey held a teleconference for the SEC media and noted while all spring games will not be played, he was not ready to announce the cancelation of spring practice. While making clear that could change in the near future, Sankey noted “at this time,” spring football is not canceled.

“It does not apply to spring practices — at this time. I make that the important, qualifying phrase,” Sankey said. “We have said no athletic activities through April 15. That doesn’t mean we will be back to normal or practice activities April 16, it was just a date certain that allows our administrators to communicate with our coaches and our coaches with our student-athletes and has resulted in the departures of campus.”

Sankey also issued this thought about how realistic holding spring practice would be this year.

“I’m not overly optimistic about the return of practice, we haven’t fully closed that opportunity, but practically that window is pretty narrow,” he added.

If nothing else, there’s some optimism for die-hard SEC football fans looking for some good news out there.