Paul Finebaum says SEC growing frustrated with player behavior amid COVID-19 spikes
By Adam Spencer
Published:
The SEC has lost 4 games already this week — Alabama-LSU, Georgia-Mizzou, Auburn-Mississippi State and Texas A&M-Tennessee — due to outbreaks of COVID-19 in various programs.
Arkansas coach Sam Pittman also won’t coach this week at Florida after he contracted the virus.
On Wednesday’s edition of “Get Up!” on ESPN, SEC Network host Paul Finebaum said there’s a growing frustration in the SEC about player behavior, as it seems players are getting fed up with COVID-19 protocols (via 247Sports):
“It’s a mess. There’s a lot of frustration within the SEC about player behavior,” Finebaum said. “At this point in the season — we’re in mid-November — players are getting tired of following protocols. Halloween was a week and a half ago and some think that may have been the super-spreader.”
Finebaum added that the Alabama-LSU game potentially getting canceled with no makeup date would be a blow to the league’s image:
“The thing about contact tracing is that it doesn’t take much. We’ve seen this many times before,” Finebaum said. “But the interesting thing is that Alabama really doesn’t need to do anything … they’re at least one of the top 2 or 3 teams in the country if not the best. But just think about the Alabama-LSU game being scrubbed. We sat here a year ago talking about that game literally all week. All eyes were on that game. The president was at the game. If that game goes by the wayside, that’s a blow to the image of the SEC.”
Will the SEC be able to get the virus under control moving forward? Or, will we see more games lost during the second half of the season?
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.
