The SEC postpones the upcoming Tennessee-Texas A&M game, sets new date for the matchup
Texas A&M was scheduled to travel to Neyland Stadium to take on Tennessee this Saturday but that will no longer be the case as the Southeastern Conference has just announced the game has been postponed until Saturday, Dec. 12.
This news comes after a few positive COVID cases in College Station led to a large number of players being sidelined due to contact tracing.
Here is the official statement released by SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey following the news:
“While it is unfortunate to have multiple postponements in the same week, we began the season with the understanding interruptions to the schedule were possible and we have remained focused throughout the season on the health of everyone around our programs. We must remain vigilant, within our programs and in our communities, to prevent the spread of the virus and to manage activities that contribute to these interruptions.”
Things have been trending this direction since Jimbo Fisher announced that A&M returned from its trip to South Carolina and the team had multiple positive COVID tests returned. While the Aggies appear to have only a few issues of COVID within the building, Fisher put the figure at just two on Monday, contact tracing threatened to sideline “over a dozen” of players for 14 days according to program Texas A&M AD Ross Bjork.
“It’s not like an outbreak, it’s just contact tracing,” Bjork said this week to ESPN. “The level of concern is not that we have a bunch of positive cases, you just don’t have the players because of your contact tracing.”
With this game being postponed, Texas A&M’s next game is now set to be against Ole Miss on Saturday, Nov. 21 in College Station. Tennessee’s next game will be the same day, at Auburn.
A&M should just forfeit the game… they would still win by 2 scores
Nailed it. Not sure if I should laugh or cry. Wonder what the odds are that Covid can cause delays in all games except Vandy… not saying the Vols would win that game, but I think it might actually be a good game at least.
I completely agree. Let’s use this week to get back to the “basics”. Just like we did the week before arkansas. Everything is fine.
Dang it.
I hate COVID
I’m a massive, life long Vols fan so I’m as frustrated or more so than everyone else. But, we need to stop operating with a short term memory. Fulmer had issues in the end as a head coach but looking back on our 14 years of misery since, was it really worth it to fire him? A coach that got us to and won the national championship game? How many of you would love an 8 game, 9 game winning season? That’s what we gave up getting rid of him because it was a win them all or nothing attitude back then. Oh how the mighty have fallen. We all loved Johnny Majors but we forget Johnny’s first few years were horrible. If we had reacted then to his record as we react now to Pruitt’s record, we would have lost an amazing coach. Even if we wanted to fire Pruitt right now, it would set the program back another 5 years minimum. You all forget Pruitt inherited a dumpster fire and yes, he’s learning on the fly but he has the spine and character to gut it out until he sees the product on the field he is trying to build. Yes, JG should have been set aside at the end of last season but no matter how awesome Bailey was in HS, he hasn’t been able to get up to SEC speed or talent with this stupid virus. Yes, the secondary sucks in the middle. This is also a lack of depth and experience issue. People are complaining about the rest of our D but no D is going to last if they are on the field the ENTIRE game. We have potential at receiver. We have studs for running backs and the O line while being disappointing is still decent. We roll right back to QB as the number 1 issue to fix. I say this is a wasted season to begin with. We know Bailey is the future. If we stop looking at each game as if it’s a championship game and use them to develop our youth, we’ll have something special to start next season. ALL the coaches need to step up as well and I think they’re trying but the last thing you want in the back of Pruitt’s mind is whether or not he’s going to get fired. Everyone says the extension was a mistake. Given too soon. I see it as UT saying we trust him and Pruitt can concentrate on building a dynasty team instead of wondering when he’ll have to pack his bags. Just my 2 cents.