SEC players express concerns over 2020 season during Wednesday call with league officials
By Adam Spencer
Published:
More than a dozen SEC football players were on a call with conference officials, including commissioner Greg Sankey, on Wednesday.
The Washington Post obtained some leaked audio of that call, during which a few players expressed significant concerns about the 2020 season plan amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
One unidentified SEC official went as far as to say there were going to be COVID-19 cases pop up on every single SEC squad:
“There are going to be outbreaks,” one official told players on the call. (The official didn’t identify himself, and the SEC spokesman declined to identify him to The Post.) “We’re going to have cases on every single team in the SEC. That’s a given. And we can’t prevent it.”
Even with that caveat, Texas A&M LB Keeath Magee II said on the call that he was left wanting more from the officials who spoke:
“You guys have answered a lot of questions the best way you could, and we really appreciate it. But as much as you guys don’t know … it’s not good enough,” he said. “We want to play. We want to see football. We want to return to normal as much as possible. But it’s just that with all this uncertainty, all this stuff that’s still circulating in the air, y’all know it kind of leaves some of us still scratching my head. … I feel like the college campus is the one thing that you can’t control.”
One player even questioned whether having a season was even worth it at this point:
Players on the SEC call, who were part of a “student-athlete leadership council,” raised similar concerns, with one player asking: “For so much unknown in the air right now, is it worth having a football season without certainty?”
We’ve seen outbreaks pop up in Major League Baseball over the past week, shutting down certain teams like the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals. Will we be able to get through a season of college football without something similar happening?
Adam is a daily fantasy sports (DFS) and sports betting expert. A 2012 graduate of the University of Missouri, Adam now covers all 16 SEC football teams. He is the director of DFS, evergreen and newsletter content across all Saturday Football brands.
