When will SEC sports return? Greg Sankey explains criteria he’ll use to determine return

National coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci gave sports fans a glimmer of hope Tuesday. Dr. Fauci said that by the fall “we will have this under control enough that it certainly will not be the way it is now, where people are shutting schools.”

That’s obviously great news for college football fans; however, there’s still a long way to go in suppressing the virus.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey visited the Paul Finebaum Show Wednesday, and he was asked what will finally determine when things will get back to normal.

“The very direct, simple answer is the Dr. Fauci comment … ‘we’re not gonna determine the timeline, the virus will determine the timeline,’” Sankey said. “And you can see the developing information just knowing what we know about science, how rapidly knowledge can develop; there are still unknowns. We’re gonna rely exactly on our public health officials and the people around our campuses communities to guide us to return to what we’ve known as normal.”

Finebaum later asked Sankey if there is a deadline on determining the college football season.

“That is the type of information that we’re soliciting right now,” Sankey said. “Using our football coaches’ knowledge, we’re actually putting together a group and our last two presidents and chancellors call, we’ve asked for a combination of sports medicine focus leaders from our campuses, those who work in the epidemiology and disease area and our athletic trainers. So a combination of people who are experienced in these areas who have the right training.

“We’ll take the input from our coaching leaders. … But we wanted to use the science information around the virus that’s being treated across the country and that’s guided how we’re living. When we understand more about those decision-making benchmarks, how do they inform our preparations. So people talk about six weeks or back to 10 weeks, I look at is as a range right now without looking at absolutes because there’s so much at the moment that’s not absolute.”

There are now 400,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States. Hopefully, the virus gets suppressed and football returns in the fall.

You can listen to a portion of the audio below:

ICYMI here’s Greg Sankey on the criteria he’ll use to determine when SEC Sports return.

Full Interview here: https://t.co/RnbZRVOoyN pic.twitter.com/obH4uCj0xU

— Paul Finebaum (@finebaum) April 8, 2020

SDS Staff

Saturday Down South reports and comments on the news around the Southeastern Conference as well as larger college football topics.