I've been critical of Greg Sankey throughout this offseason, but he's now the smartest guy in the room
I think even Greg Sankey would admit that he hasn’t been perfect throughout this COVID-fueled offseason.
The SEC commissioner’s handling of the schedule was, um, bizarre? To have another Power 5 conference like the Big Ten go rogue and announce a 10-game conference schedule was one thing. Sankey and his fellow Power 5 commissioners were admittedly caught off guard by that. Waiting a month to announce the exact same plan as the Big Ten certainly gave off the vibe that Sankey was on his heels a bit.
That theme continued again last week when, as many SEC fans know, it took over a week for the conference to announce which 2 games would be added to each team’s 2020 schedule. And so, on Friday at 4 p.m. ET, the league offered up 2 hours notice that it would show the televised schedule unveiling at 6 p.m. ET.
Why? That’s a good question. In the conference where “It Just Means More,” certainly nobody would be surprised if athletic directors fought against a seemingly random selection system that had no such precedent. Either way, Sankey came off like a commissioner on his heels.
But then the past 72 hours happened, and don’t you know it, Sankey looks like he dug his heels into the ground. In a group of Power 5 commissioners like the Big Ten’s Kevin Warren and the Pac-12’s Larry Scott who seemingly shot themselves in the foot at every turn from Saturday through Monday, Sankey seemed like the smartest guy in the room.
Why do I say that?
Warren’s inexperience showed in a big way over the weekend. Just 4 days after airing a 2.5-hour TV special to unveil the Big Ten’s 2020 conference-only schedule, reports surfaced that Warren preferred a spring season, and that he had planned on announcing the cancelation of fall sports Tuesday, but that he was seeking the support of other Power 5 conferences on that (that’s ironic considering that Warren went rogue with the scheduling stuff and didn’t need Power 5 support then).
But wait, there’s more!
The Big Ten presidents reportedly voted 12-2 to cancel the fall season. That leaked to the likes of Dan Patrick and Chris Solari of the Detroit Free Press on Monday morning. By the way, neither one makes up things like that. For a couple of hours, it appeared the Big Ten was set to cancel its season … until it wasn’t. At least not yt. Numerous national writers then reported early Monday afternoon that a vote didn’t take place and that nothing definitive had been decided.
The Big Ten’s Monday consisted of coaches like Ohio State’s Ryan Day and Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh sharing strong opposition to any notion that the season should be canceled. Day and Nebraska’s Scott Frost expressed the desire to “seek other playing options” if the Big Ten were to punt on the season.
Hey, and then on Tuesday, the Big Ten did officially cancel its fall season in hopes of playing in the spring.
Awful communication, awful leadership, awful everything. How many Big Ten fans do you think said to themselves, “man, our commissioner is failing right now.”
Meanwhile, Sankey came out in the midst of all of Monday’s craziness with this public statement:
Sankey has been consistent on those first 2 words — be patient. He’s right. What’s the point of delaying the season, implementing universal testing protocols and continuing to seek solutions if you aren’t willing to see that through?
He didn’t come out and say “we’re playing football no matter what” because at a time like now, he can’t guarantee that. He repeated that Tuesday morning on Dan Patrick’s show. What he can guarantee is that he’s not going to have knee-jerk reactions. He’s not going to make decisions unless he understands the potential ramifications. The last thing he wants is to have a report leak that SEC university presidents voted to punt on a season, only to go back a couple of hours later and pretend like that never happened.
Sankey has made his stance as clear as ever. If we were to find out that he’s suddenly pulled a 180 a la Warren, you’d better believe he’d communicate that. And to be honest, I wouldn’t expect that considering how deliberate Sankey has been.
I’ve been critical of that approach at times because while I do think the SEC was smart to have conference-wide testing policies released in the first week of August, it felt like there should have been a more firm stance on that during voluntary workouts. That was back in June, by the way.
But if we’re being honest, SEC fans are probably thanking their lucky stars that Sankey is their commissioner. At least they should be.
They have a commissioner who has been clear about communication, which seems pretty important at a time like now. On Tuesday morning, Sankey went on “The Dan Patrick Show”, ironically enough, and talked about an idea that picked up plenty of steam in the wake of the Big Ten’s botched communication.
Greg Sankey on if the SEC would add any teams for a year during @dpshow appearance:
“There are probably any number of legal, contractual, media, I could just go down the list of reasons that that’s not quite practical.”
— SEC Mike (@MichaelWBratton) August 11, 2020
Oh, and what about if the other Power 5 conferences punted on a season and the SEC felt like it had a handle on its testing and protocols through camp?
“I don’t think that’s the right direction, really,” Sankey said before the Big Ten’s announcement on Tuesday. “Could we? Certainly. So, there’s a difference between can you do something and should you do something in life. And so, we’re actually set up with our schedule, with our own health protocols, that we could if that was the circumstance; operate on our own. I’m not sure that’s the wisest direction, but you know, there’s been a lot of interesting things have happened since March in college sports.”
In other words, that’s not impossible. Again, as Sankey said, that’s why the scheduling move was made in the first place. The SEC is on the same page.
That’s something else Sankey absolutely deserves credit for. Unlike the Big Ten, where you’ve got university presidents pitted against athletic directors, coaches and players, the SEC seems united on its stance. You’re not seeing leaked reports of anonymous SEC athletic directors predicting the demise of the season. Instead, you’re seeing quotes like this from Eli Drinkwitz (via 101 ESPN radio show “Karraker & Smallmon” on Tuesday):
“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.”
They’ve all been on the same page. That’s leadership.
Sankey might be the relatively soft-spoken, marathon-running dad who looks more like an assistant soccer coach than the leader of a premier college athletics conference, but man, he embodied the latter during this defining time.
And look. It’s not as if Sankey has simply been going to the beat of his own drum. He said from the jump that he’s going to let the advice of medical officials dictate his decision-making. As he said again on his TV appearance Tuesday morning, Sankey repeated that the medical advisory board gave the green light to continue with their preparations.
That’s another thing to remember with all of this. If universities weren’t putting protocols in place to properly test, distance and essentially acknowledge the virus’ presence, this would be a different discussion. That’s why sports shut down back in March. None of those protocols were in place.
Some people, I’d argue, haven’t used the past 5 months wisely. They sat on their hands and pretended like the virus would either go away or that they didn’t have any sort of responsibility.
(OK, we all know I’m talking about the NCAA.)
Sankey, on the other hand, showed time and time again that he’s an adult. He didn’t let a headline scare him into making a monumental decision, nor did he seem to be at odds with players like Scott, who reportedly said that the Pac-12’s #WeAreUnited movement was “a misguided PR stunt.”
There have been plenty of people who have been misguided in the past 5 months, but Sankey certainly hasn’t been one of them. At least not during these defining moments.
It’s becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day — the SEC is in good hands with Sankey at the controls.
I got to hand it to Sankey, he dadgum shore ain’t flippant. And stuff.
If Kevin Warren and Larry Scott still have jobs after all this, those conferences are going to suffer for years to come. I remember listening to a Sankey interview when the SEC tournament was cancelled, and the man was getting choked up talking about how bad he felt for the players who didn’t get the opportunity to compete. Glad we have him in our corner.
He may be right…but he may be wrong. If the games and season are played with no catastrophic viral event, then he’s a brilliant savant. However, if ONLY ONE player dies from COVID-19, that narrative changes quickly.
If players decide to play and get the virus, and whatever follows from it, it was their choice. Keep in mind that if players decide not to play, the changes of getting the virus remain. Not playing is no guarantee – and in fact – being in a highly structured and supervised environment with the team likely provides better protection from the virus than being out in the general population (either on campus as a student or back home away from campus). Hoping for the best in a situation where we don’t yet have all the answers. No one does. Life has risk. No judgment for any individual making decisions about how they want to handle this. The point is, however, that players in the SEC may have the ability to make that decision – play or don’t play.
Except you’re leaving the part out where the schools would be going against the advice of their own medical team opinions
Sparky, I guess I missed that story. Where did you find it?
Sparky is scared. He’s not alone.
That would depend if they did go against medical advice. If swathes of medical professionals say the current protections and efforts are enough to minimize the chances of infection as much as possible, then they wouldn’t be. That’s the current narrative coming from medical professionals in the Big 12, ACC, and SEC.
The narrative Mud is describing only becomes catastrophic to the conference (any death is catastrophic to families and communities, so I don’t want to downplay that in the least) is if ONLY a player dies while non-playing students don’t suffer any infections. It would have to be reasoned that football was the sole contributing factor to student infections. I’m willing to bet I’d permanently change my picture to a UGA logo that that doesn’t happen. When you put large groups of people in any spaces, you’re going to get infections.
I have no doubt we’ll see cases of infection in football players, but we’ll also see cases of infection in B1G student populations as classes return and campus events continue.
I guess you missed the part where the SEC’s medical team has told them it’s okay to proceed with the season.
Players wanting to play is obviously an important part of the conversation, but, remember, many of these players would play the next week after a concussion if it were up to them and there wasn’t a medical protocol in place. At the very least, team doctors have to also be on board with playing because players will want to play when they probably should not. The conference is (obviously) in contact with health experts every step of the way. I certainly hope the doctors and health experts continue to tell the SEC we can have a season.
What about the protests/riots/lootings? They are not following orders about COVID-19!
Agree that it’s the players’ choice. But sometimes the conference/university presidents need to be the adults in the room. I want there to be football as much as anyone, but I just don’t see how a case doesn’t slip through somewhere during the season and infect dozens of players. It’s going to happen.
It will happen. I don’t think one outbreak of less than 20 players would ruin the season. If the source and time of infection can be identified, then the team or teams involved should be able to quarantine for a week or so, and then the games they missed could be made up since each team has two bye weeks. The issue would be if over half a roster tests positive and then there aren’t enough healthy players to play, or if a player becomes hospitalized with it. Those would be the season-ending scenarios.
Yep…kinda “derned if you do, derned if you don’t” deal. I hope it works out that we get to have a season with no catastrophic outcome and we can tell the leagues that opted out to suck it.
Not so. Why? Because from a legal standpoint, no one can be sued. Players die yearly, somewhere in college football. Plus, he’s relying on sound medical advice. Statistically speaking for the age group there is a 0.04% chance of anyone dying from it for the age group. In other words, a regular seasonal flu risk. You can bet in the event someone did, it would sure be under close eyes to make sure he didn’t pass from a car wreck, and had anti-bodies in his system from having had it and recovered and it be listed as a covid19 death. You’d need a pretty serious underlining condition for this age group for that to happen. It sounds like Sankey realizes this and his medical advisers.
“If Only one player dies” Consider this…A young man, if not in college…goes out to a bar and gets infected & dies. Who is to blame for that ? Sue the bar(he got it there) or sue the car manufacturer(the car brought him there) or sue the convenience store(who sold him the gas to power the car) or sue the tire co.(they produced the tires that allowed him to go to the bar) or sue the government(they printed the money he paid his tab with). Your argument does not hold water. The players want to play. Life is not guaranteed for any of us. Life happens.
Reb, don’t overlook the fact that if a player does get the virus there will be absolutely no way to prove, in fact, that it was contracted from playing or practicing. Any attorney would ask one simple question; did you ever leave campus and go to a store or anywhere else in public?
Totally agree with Rebel, In another week or two all of college football will be canceled for 2020. Maybe all 5 conferences start up in January 2021. Once students are back on all campuses covid will spike. No way SEC takes the risk of playing right now. Considering the heat on the field, someone possibly having covid and not detected yet and if a player collapses while playing????? If the players are not in complete bubbles away from the student population how can you stop spread? All you need is one player and that player to pass it through the team and someone possibly gets seriously hurt on the field or in practice.
Stay scared. This site isn’t the place for you
I love college football, but the fans and home field advantage is the difference maker. If games are going to be played in empty stadiums, just cancel. Be done with it.
I love CF as well and I can watch it on TV and still love it.
Trouble with this is you are only thinking of yourself. The players want to play, thereby building up their NFL potential, fans want to see games even if only on tv, and the schools need the tv revenue.
Try glass half full: we could potentially have fall and spring football.
Yeah we could have the “Big 3 Conferences” play in the Fall and the “Group of 7” conferences play in the Spring with flags.
Spring football is a joke. Justin Fields, and every other half decent player is going to be preparing for the draft, not a spring football season that will have no bowl games or championships (except for a Mid10 or Packitup12 title).
It for sure isn’t going to be the same at David Wade this year…
I don’t see why there couldn’t be at least the students in attendance. If there isn’t general admission seating, then the students could all spread out more all across the stadium.
Can we just ‘do away with’ those dang cowbells? Asking for a friend. LoL
Good points. You don’t see the interwebs exploding with conflicting, unconfirmed reports about the SEC doing this, that or the other. On the contrary, it does seem, right now at least, to be calmly paddling through uncharted waters.
Absolutely!
He’s not any smarter than the ACC or Big12. They’re kicking the can with their hands in their pockets just the same.
It seems most reactions here are purely fandom and the missing of football. No one appears to be an immunologist. We ALL want football, but none of us were given the medical information shared late last week with the Big Ten presidents. Nearly 600 young people in the U.S., from infants to 20 year olds, have developed an inflammatory syndrome linked to Covid-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Most of the children required intensive care.
“I fear that there has been this sense that kids [and young adults] just won’t get infected or don’t get infected in the same way as adults and that, therefore, they’re almost like a bubbled population,” Michael Osterholm, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.
Being in the NBA or NHL bubble away from all others is not the same as being on campus with 20-40,000 others. And college players are also guided by their parents’ desires not fans’ wants and needs. And comparing pros to college kids is a false equivalency.
The players will be on campus regardless of whether or not they play football. As a parent, I’d prefer to have the coaches advising and protecting my kid while he’s at school.
It’s unfortunate. The resources of P5 athletic departments benefit players. They obviously have better access to testing and medical professionals on campus than at home.
But, campus life remains the biggest threat to a CFB season. Good luck asking over 1,000 young men to self-isolate and give up bars, parties and meeting girls for 5 months (August-December).
I’m optimistic the SEC will start a 2020 fall CFB season. Having a lot of players in 14-day quarantines could cause the season to fall apart. The way the virus can spread in close contact, we could have position groups, even whole starting 11s out for 2 weeks at a time in quarantine.
Agree. There’s no way some of the players don’t end up at a party, bar, someone’s dorm room and catch it.
Really? That is why Americans are going to crashed and burned because too many people ignored to follow rules/advices.
Also the law!
I’m not buying that. If students can be on campus and out in public, then they can play football.
I think this is THE argument to make for football being played. If fans have to social distance and wear masks and the players have to all wear full face shields, then so be it. But no one could ever convince me players are more at risk of getting covid playing football than in a college class or dorm.
Especially dorms. I agree.
This would be a fine stance to take if students weren’t being asked to return to campus all across the U.S. There’s no more inherent danger in contracting the virus through playing football then there is in living in a dorm, attending campus events, going out in public after class, etc. It’s a rather large contradiction if one says that they’re looking out for student safety by cancelling their organized sport, but still having them report to campus and live student life.
No one here needs to be a medical expert in order to find legit unabiased stats on this virus and think from there. Real stat is mortality has fallen to 0.04%. Thats the level of mortality risk of the common flu. Particularly for this age group. By next week that number will be smaller. Why are you quoting experts whom aren’t working at the highest levels that advise POTUS? Those people actually have something to lose if they are wrong.
Your ‘perspective’ is lost when you have to admit that these same kids will be walking around on campus all day and in restaurants, bars, and parties at night.
I think it was foolish to cancel and I think the BiG will regret it.
Covid is a serious concern, but i believe the players are actually safer in the controlled environment of the football program.
I tend to agree, but just to play devil’s advocate, it could be argued that programs can’t really ensure that all their players are staying on campus. A lot of players live off campus, so coaches may not be able to keep track of where those players are at all times. I would agree though that it still seems safer than players being at home.
Being a follower doesn’t get you any extra leadership points. The SEC will fall in line behind the BIG and the Pac 12 because it’s the right thing to do. Studies show the potential for “COVID to affect athletes cardiovascularly.” Google: Michael Emery/Cleveland Clinic. You and Pawwl are always scrounging for praise for the league, by slinging mud at others. It’s time to stop shilling. It makes you look weak. The SEC, sportswise, speaks for its self on the playings fields. That’s all it needs.
Did the study happen to discuss the likelihood of infection by having students return to campus in general? I don’t think I’ve seen a study discuss the differences between student life and playing an organized sport. That is the point so many are making here; it’s hypocritical to say one social thing is too dangerous while having students engage in all other social things. If student safety was the biggest priority, universities would continue distance learning. Dorm life is an outbreak and a half waiting on its own.
I think Tom’s drunk.
If the SEC ends up cancelling it will have nothing to do with what the Big Ten did. The SEC is actually going about this in a professional manner. Sitting back, taking it one step at a time and gathering all the information so that they can develop a plan. The pathetic Big Ten collapsed and let politics and optics take over and they folded. Sad really.
Don’t ever compare the leadership of the Big Ten to the SEC. The Big Ten has had so many atrocious scandals in the past decade and they continue to stub their toe.
Concerning the current-situation involving the virus….waiting might just be the best thing, instead of canning the season like the Big 10 just did. The West coast teams dance to a different drummer than we do & I felt they’d cancel. Here’s hoping we have SEC, Big 12 & ACC football and we’ll crown a National Champion with no * asterisk…because we played…we did not quit.
Concerning the current-situation involving the virus….waiting might just be the best thing, instead of canning the season like the Big 10 just did. The West coast teams dance to a different drummer than we do & I felt they’d cancel. Here’s hoping we have SEC, Big 12 & ACC football and we’ll crown a National Champion.
Sorry…the mods said it was a duplicate post and I changed a few words and both magically appeared ? Hmmm.
Y’all need to come to grips with the fact that there WILL BE NO COLLEGE FOOTBALL played this season.
All these writers are doing—hello Connor O’Gara—is stringing you along because THEY KNOW YOU DESPERATELY WANT IT.
And saying ridiculous crap like “Well, the players still want to play” is more ridiculous fuel on the fire; of course they want to play! Everyone wants things to return to “normal” but to continue to try to force the issue is just making things worse.
Accept it and move forward.
I’ll accept it when its actually cancelled. For now, these three conferences are going to try and do what’s best for the programs involved and try to implement a plan to play a safe season. If the plan they create ends up not working and they have to cancel, then so be it. But at least they are trying unlike the Big Ten and Pac-12.
Absolute. We’re still over a month away from the first SEC games being played. So much could change in the next month that it would be irrational for anyone to make a decision right now. Hopefully the SEC continues to wait it out as long as possible before pulling the plug should they choose to do so.
If the college students at at these universities for in-person classes=Play Football ! How many times have we heard “If no students are on campus then no football”. Well, they are on campus in most places.
Exactly. I’ve heard a lot of people saying the only reason students are coming back to campuses is so the administrators can justify playing football. In a lot of cases, I don’t doubt that at all. But that even further justifies our point that if football can’t be played then students shouldn’t be on campus.
1. Most people are going to catch it, football or not
2. Almost everybody will have mild or no symptoms
3. Doctors, hospitals, and treatments need to be available to everyone at a reasonable cost….. and that should be true for everybody. Notice I didn’t say free because then we have no social incentive to act responsibly
4. It’s way past time our legal system be reformed so that it can’t be the a robin-hood tool so scary that it ruins every fun thing in the USA.
5. As for the big 10 conference, or most any conference, or NCAA over-sight, it’s not working. Maybe it is time for professionals in an elite division of college sports. If so, good for them, but I don’t want to waste my time watching any of it. Still it would be great to get them removed from the amateurs so we could have un-fixed amateur competition back again.
6. Sometimes the Cornhusker fans can’t be enjoyed but in this case I am 100% behind them. Let them schedule anybody they can. Hopefully Missouri will be allowed to offer them a game. I’m clearly not saying the same thing about Ohio State, Michigan, or Michigan State. A year without hearing their names mentioned would be a good thing.
I’m often critical of Sankey and the SEC, as many of us are in sure, but I’m more thankful than ever to have him in our corner right now. I hope the SEC will continue to wait until they absolutely have no other choice but to cancel. I see no reason a decision has to be made this week, especially since we’ve already pushed the season back several weeks.
I hope we play, selfishly, but if we do those young men are pawns in a giant experiment. We have limited data to ensure their safety and we will be having a season with our fingers crossed there are no deaths or, like me, a month long debilitating illness that one cannot seem to fully overcome. We could make it through with no serious illnesses or the result could be much worse. An experiment most risk management professionals would not take. Only time will tell.
I would agree with you if students weren’t going to be on campus anyway. If students are on campus, and especially if they’re living in dorms, then there’s no reason not to have college football.
Great point! If I had a college age kid, they’d be taking a year off, just like my 10 yr old is going to WiFi school at least until January. After my illness and continued mono like symptoms, there’s no way in hell I’d consider subjecting my kid to this. A lot of people think this is a hoax until they or someone they know gets it. I’ve had at least 30 people tell me they are taking precautions since learning that I caught it. I told each of them that I am happy they are choosing to be safer and the fact that it took my illness for them to wake up is probably the most ignorant thing I have ever heard.
I’m actually a current student at Auburn. I really don’t have an opinion one way or another about in-person classes at this point. I’m on scholarship so I don’t have a choice but to attend classes in person when required, which is fine. But I still maintain that if it’s safe enough for us to be on campus then it’s safe enough for football. If we can’t have football then students shouldn’t be on campus.
I also have to hand it to Sankey. He has the strongest hand (SEC) and leadership in the SEC/ACC/B12 triad. The three conferences have an opportunity TV wise, recruiting etc to leap ahead of all others IF they do it risk. It is a risk/reward situation.
Try actually reading the study. That might help.
or just talk to somebody who had a positive test and is perfectly normal immediately or in a few days.
Hey Tom, you do realize that all viruses can cause heart problems, specifically myocarditis. The flu is one that has proven to cause heart problems later in life. This isn’t new information to the medical world. Regarding the JAMA Cardiology study done by the German doctors, the median age of participants was 85 YEARS OLD. They also concluded that more research and studying needed to be conducted to see the full picture on whether Covid creates long lasting heart problems.
M son is a student at UK and they are testing all 30K students and so far less than .08% are testing positive.
The University of Alabama had similar results out of the around 30K students tested.
I know Greg Sankey is not reading this stuff but I do wish he would work to get us a +1 so we could have the historical rivalry games (UGA vs Ga Tech, FL vs FSU and the others).
The whole Big10 thing is just mystifying. Will some players get COVID-19 during the season. More probable than possible. Will some of the players from the PAC/Big who didn’t play this year get COVID-19. That also is more probable than possible. How will the conference look when Justin Fields gets the virus while sitting in class or at a party? Everybody can live in a dorm, have class together and go about their business but football is where the line is drawn.