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Eli Drinkwitz praises the SEC’s leadership, says the league’s plan is to play the upcoming fall season
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Doom and gloom reigned hard over the weekend as the calls to cancel the college football season were heard loud and clear from many outlets across the sport’s landscape.
The only problem? No one attached their name to any comments or stories and once star players, coaches, administrators, university presidents, and even President Trump, weighed in on the topic, those dissenting voices grew very quite.
One of the few consistent messages issued has come from the SEC and commissioner Greg Sankey who has repeatedly stated that the SEC will be cautious in its approach and make decisions in the best interest of the student-athletes.
That’s an approach Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz recently praised during an appearance on 101 ESPN radio show “Karraker & Smallmon” on Tuesday.
When asked about the upcoming college football season, Drinkwitz said the plan in the SEC remains the same — the season will go on as scheduled.
“I can tell you on the record, not one of these anonymous sources that people want to put on Twitter and put all, you know, all these fake rumors out there and cause the media to get into a tizzy and it’s just not good for public health,” Drinkwitz said on the show. “I can tell you on the record, the SEC is steadfast in their plan (to play).
“Commissioner Sankey has been steadfast in his approach to this. He’s not been flippant, he has been methodical, the athletic directors and presidents have all marched with his message and our coaching staff, we are planning on playing September 26.”
The way Drinkwitz views the situation, the SEC put itself in the best possible position to play out the season when it decided to push back the upcoming fall season to Sept. 26 and monitor how students’ return to campuses affects COVID cases in football facilities — if at all.
“We backed up the season in order to allow us to have more time to see how this thing is going to go,” Drinkwitz added. “There are several universities that have started school back already. And so we’re anticipating there might be a little bump, and we want to be able to navigate that, but you know, that that’s the plan right now and I don’t foresee that changing until there’s more information out there.
“We’re not really worried about what everybody else is thinking.”
Shots fired there at the Big Ten.
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
