“Contact tracing was significant at a position,” said Drinkwitz, per Dave Matter of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “But there’s no outbreak or pause (of team activities) or anything like that. We went out and practiced today. And then we test again today and we’ll find out those results.
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College Football
Mizzou coach Eli Drinkwitz addresses team’s COVID situation ahead of Georgia game
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In a week where three SEC matchups have been postponed due to COVID-19 issues, SEC football will be few and far between this coming Saturday.
One of the matchups that is still scheduled to be played is Missouri’s home game against Georgia. The Tigers are not untouched by COVID-19, but it appears they will have enough to play against the Bulldogs. Head coach Eli Drinkwitz provided an update on Tuesday.
“We went, four straight weeks without a single positive,” he continued. “And now we had one and we’ve got some significant contact tracing just from the nature of that positive. Our number one priority is the health and safety of our players and our team. The number one thing we know about this virus is it’s highly contagious. So we’re trying to be very smart about wrapping our arms around it and making sure that there’s not a reason to have to pause.”
It appears that it is not a huge issue among Mizzou’s roster for the moment with only one positive, but as Drinkwitz alluded to, the virus can spread quickly and the hope is that no more positives come out of the woodwork as the week progresses.
The first-year head coach was also asked about the process of submitting a gameday roster if in fact COVID-19 does have a larger impact on his players.
“That’s in the hands of our administration and the SEC league office,” Drinkwitz said. “I think the thing that we’ve been very adamant about from when we started is, number one, player safety. Are we making sure that our players and their safety comes first? And if it does, then let’s try to play football. It’s in that order.
“We submit our roster every day to the SEC office. There are certain protocol benchmarks that everybody has to meet in order to play. We submitted our roster and as of now I don’t know when a decision would have to be made or not made.”
As of right now, four of the originally-scheduled seven SEC matchups are on track to be played on Saturday. The coming days will tell us if it stays that way.
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Lucas is a digital reporter for 104.5 The Zone in Nashville, and a high school play-by-play broadcaster. Lucas has been covering SEC football for Saturday Down South since 2018.
