No. 1 Alabama, no. 3 Ohio State and no. 5 Texas A&M have one troubling thing in common. Each school will be at home this weekend, their games canceled by COVID-19.
The SEC alone postponed four of its seven games. Making up all of those games is progressively tricky as schools run out of extra weeks to play, and the league may have to get imaginative, though SEC commissioner Greg Sankey dismissed the numerous ideas floating on social media.
"There are plenty of scheduling suggestions on Twitter,” he told ESPN's Alex Scarborough. “I don’t run the league based on Twitter."
COVID is not just a concern for college football. The NFL and certainly high school teams are juggling their own issues.
The LHSAA says its member schools have quarantined for a combined 96 weeks this year during the first six weeks of the football season. This week, seven Acadiana area schools are on byes; an eighth, Ascension, is pending after Loreauville canceled its final two weeks of the regular season.
Tuesday, following an executive committee meeting, the LHSAA laid out its postseason policies for football as they pertain to the virus. Schools will have to forfeit games if they go into quarantine during the playoffs, even if it costs a team championship. Executive Director Eddie Bonine made a final plea to schools to be proactive, be safe, and get the league to the finish line.
"Ask our spring sports athletes this year. They were seniors. They didn't get to graduate. I always think about that," he said. "About the feeling we had in this office and others had about all the cancellations, golf, tennis, all the things we had in the spring that didn't get a season at all. And we've done it. Let's not do anything to taint it or put a bruise on it."
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