SEC=Southeastern Conference (no need for the inevitable Securities and Exchange Commission joke)
As an ACC fan, I generally like nothing to do with the SEC but this is definitely a good decision. Get your players vaccinated or else forfeit games if you get an outbreak! Yes, they’re student athletes but they are in college and getting vaccinated should be an absolute no brain decision.
I’d love to see this policy in all of college athletics, it’s time to get life back to normal and that means getting vaccinated and controlling Covid. Institutions of higher education are the place to start.
I hope the SEC actually follows through with this proclamation. We’ll see what happens when Alabama doesn’t have enough healthy players for its scheduled game against Northwest Connecticut Valley State A&M, though.
I’d expect a ballbuster like Nick Saban to be getting his guys to the campus clinic to get vaxxed. Good on the SEC for putting the hammer down. Here’s hoping other leagues follow suit.
Well, if it’s against Northwest Connecticut Valley State A&M, it won’t affect Alabama’s SEC title chances. If Alabama ends up with forfeit losses to Mississippi and Texas A&M in early October before finishing up with decisive wins over LSU and Auburn, the CFP committee will…pretend that the “forfeits” were never even scheduled and Alabama is 10-0. Forfeits will only affect who gets into the SEC championship game and who is bowl eligible, and even then, with the NCAA keeping the APRs private, who knows who will end up bowl eligible if there aren’t enough 6-6 or better teams.
If this means “get vaccinated or else”, it would be a good thing. If this means “Get all the players out on that field even if they’re coughing on each other”, then it would be a terrible thing.
Agreed, and not just for SEC football! At this point, people who are refusing to get vaccinated are on their own! I will make no accommodations for them. Before anyone goes off on a rant, please notice I said “refuse to get”, not “are unable to be” for one reason or another.
Maybe the conference could do something about those 40% vaccination rates in their schools’ states and require fans wanting to attend games to be vaxxed too.
Look on the bright side, their campuses will have herd immunity by week 6. They just might not have as many fans in the stands or students in the classrooms, or as many among the living.
I also posted this in the off season NFL thread but thought it would be of interest to college fans as well. The NFL isn’t playing around with Covid postponements either.
There’s an awful lot of players at SEC schools with NFL dreams. Perhaps yet another push to get them vaccinated will help.
Delta cares less than the initial strain did that you are vaccinated, I mean. The original strain is blocked nearly all the time by the vaccine, but the Delta variant can take hold despite it.
So you get all your players vaccinated and then a bunch catch Delta anyway; now what?
ETA: I see the NFL is already addressing this, and they’ve stated that they are in favor of money over the safety and health of their employees as well as the general public. But we already knew that about the NFL, didn’t we?
That’s not what it looks to me like the NFL is saying. That looks to me like:
If there is an outbreak, that team won’t play.
If its possible to reschedule the game, then they will.
If it’s not possible to reschedule the game, and the outbreak was among unvaccinated players, then it will be counted as a forfeit.
If it’s not possible to reschedule the game, and the outbreak was among vaccinated players, then… something else. Presumably the game just doesn’t count at all?
If that’s the correct understanding, then it would be a definite incentive to get all players vaccinated.