Greg Sankey: Next Week is an Important Milestone
Athletic directors and decision makers from around the Southeastern Conference met last week at conference headquarters to discuss the future of fall sports. At the time, the major takeaway was that there were no major takeaways.
Decisions will be made based on the next few weeks of public health data and COVID-19 case rates. After that Monday meeting, the plan was to evaluate the next two-to-three weeks of data and make a decision from there.
Now, it seems like next week might be the most critical. In an interview with ESPN last night, SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey stated just as much, calling the week "an important milestone."
"I haven't put a deadline. I've put dates out there. I wrote up a timeline way back in May and I've realized how much has changed since then. So we look at next week as an important milestone," Sankey said. "The challenge right now is to figure out where the finish line might be."
The conference allowed schools to ramp up activities last week, allowing on-field coaches to finally be able to get their hands on players in limited fashion. Teams can amp it up again later this week and in two weeks real practices can theoretically begin.
That timeline is the one that this next week will help to determine the efficacy of moving forward.
"The milestone check next week is 'are we ready to move into the next stage of practice,' Sankey said. "Part of that will be a conversation about what the season will look like, and that's a conversation that has been taking place for weeks."
Interestingly, Sankey referenced the return of players to NFL training camps around the nation as a pseudo-classroom for college football.
"We have learning opportunities there," he said.
Many NFL teams have already brought their rookies in to camp. Full training camps in the NFL can begin opening up next week. Apparently, how that looks will weigh on the Southeastern Conference.
As far as what goes into the decision making process as to whether or not the conference will move forward with fall football, there's a bevy of factors in play. Paramount, according to Sankey, is the virus case situations in each campus, local city and state for each of the 14 SEC member institutions.
The Power 5 conferences coming up with common and uniform testing protocols over the past week was a big step, helping conferences and teams feel confident that the players on the other side of the line of scrimmage are healthy.
Will the season be played out as planned? Well that's a no, but there are a handful of contingencies on the table, including increasing conference games to ten per team and creating a sort of alliance between the ACC, Big 12 and SEC. All of this, of course, is still very much up in the air.
But apparently this upcoming week will be a big tipping point, at least for the Southeastern Conference.
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