News of an SEC game being postponed this week spread by way of a bus company.

That’s how Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz shared with Paul Finebaum about how the Tigers game with Vanderbilt this week was called off. A spread of COVID-19 at Vanderbilt caused the Commodores to be without the minimum number of players to play this week. In addition to having at least 53 players available, the SEC mandated that each team one quarterback, seven offensive linemen and four defensive linemen ready to play on game day.

“It’s been a wild about 3 hours. If y’all want to know the real truth, our bus company alerted us that Vanderbilt had canceled their buses and that’s when we first got wind that maybe this game wasn’t going to go on,” Drinkwitz said on “The Paul Finebaum Show.” “As more and more things transpired, we got word from the SEC office that Vanderbilt had fallen below the COVID threshold. We absolutely understand. We’ve been dealing with COVID just like everyone else, so our No. 1 priority is for everyone at Vanderbilt to be safe, the players to be safe. These football contests can be made up. We’re going to use that as a positive for us here at Mizzou. We’ll use the week to get healthy. We’ll use the week to improve. We’ll use the week to get refocused on our academics. And then we’ll use the week to get focused on our next opponent after that, which will be Florida.”

At this point, the Missouri-Vanderbilt game in Columbia is tentatively rescheduled for Dec. 12.