Nick Saban Addresses COVID-19 Concerns Following Rise in Cases on UA's Campus
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama football coach Nick Saban discussed his staff and players' handling of the pandemic during a Zoom press conference with the media on Tuesday evening.
To start off his answer to a question regarding the navigation of the high number of cases on the University of Alabama's campus in recent week's, Saban began by discussing his team's process.
“We have a process that we use around here," Saban said. "We test everybody three times a week. We’ve had a minimal amount of players that tested positive, but we have had some. I think we were less than one percent from the Fourth of July to when school started. That number probably went up a little bit when school started but not really significantly. And I think it’s very important to understand that we started this whole thing in terms of we need to have tests and we need to social distance and we need to do all this stuff because we were very concerned about overloading the healthcare system because of how contagious this is."
Earlier in the summer when players returned to campus, rumors began to circulate that some players had come back and had tested positive. Those rumors were later confirmed to be true, although no official number of players that tested positive or who the infected players were was never released by Alabama athletics.
Fortunately, according to Saban, the majority of the players that have tested positive since July have not fallen terribly ill with the virus.
"We haven’t had any players that are really bad sick from this," Saban said. "A lot of guys that test positive are even asymptomatic. I actually think, even though we focus on the number of students that have tested positive, the hospitalizations have gone down in Tuscaloosa since school started, and I think that’s the thing that we need to be most concerned about and we’re most concerned that our players — how are they impacted by this?"
Saban then added that he and his staff are doing everything possible to ensure their players' safety.
"They have to be out and we take good care of them and we’re doing everything that we can," Saban said. "We even had the Surgeon General Zoom with them a few weeks ago about their personal bubble, things that they can do to make sure they stay safe, understand the risks of this to certain population groups that have pre-existing conditions and are older and not spreading that to anybody else, as well as you doing the best you can not to put yourself in a situation where you may get it. And I think our players have done a pretty good job of that.
"We wear masks in meetings, we spread out in meetings. It’s been some changes for us but nothing that really has affected how functional we can actually be.”
With the coronavirus pandemic being an ever-looming threat to college football players, depth is at an all-time importance level to teams this upcoming season. With the unpredictability of the virus and who can contract it, along with a minimum two weeks of quarantine and inability to play, depth is something that a lot of college coaches are taking an extra look at this year.
Saban is no exception.
"We’re trying to practice all guys all the time," Saban said. "In other words, some days we coach the 1s and the 3s and the 2s and 4s and we split the coaching staffs so everybody’s getting reps. Some days we do the 1s and the 2s and the 3s and the 4s, but we are coaching all the players. And the staff is split so that we can try to develop more. Some positions we have very good depth at, some positions we don’t. And I think that probably every team is probably in that circumstance to some degree at some positions. And sometimes we have actually trained guys to play more than one position, probably more so this year than we have in the past, so that you have diversity when it comes to if you lose a few players, maybe have a better opportunity to get the best players on the field."
Saban then added that the depth issues that could be caused by the virus might even ultimately mean that some players might have to play both ways.
"It could even come — and I would not say this in terms of who it involves — is guys playing both sides of the ball," Saban said. "Now, I think that’s hard to do in the offensive line. It’s probably a lot easier to do at skill positions. Those are some of the things that we’ve tried to do, is create more knowledge and experience in players having more diversity in terms of what they can play."
