SEC Announces New Practice Schedule For Fall Camp
On the heels of the announcement for a later start to the season, news broke on Tuesday that the SEC will have pushed practice back as well.
The conference approved a preseason plan that now has the official start date for fall camp practice as Aug. 17 according to Sports Illustrated's Ross Dellenger.
Dellenger reports that the plan allows teams to practice 25 times over a 40-day period while sticking to the NCAA's rule of 20 hours of in-season football access time per week.
From August 7-16 are allowed to participate in up to 14 hours a week of strength and conditioning as well as walkthroughs.
According to the report, the plan "expands the SEC’s practice window by 11 days, providing flexibility for more off days and potential COVID-19 related interruptions."
Last week the SEC announced they were moving to a 10-game conference-only schedule and still have some details to hammer out.
This year the divisional schedule and two cross-division opponents remain the same. So for South Carolina that means they'll face division opponents Missouri, Kentucky, Florida, Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Georgia and Texas A&M and LSU as their west division opponents. That's eight games and means each SEC team has to add two more conference games to their schedule.
The season is scheduled to start on Sept. 26. The delay is supposed to allow for the monitoring of trends in COVID-19 cases, according to conference commissioner Greg Sankey.
"We believe these schedule adjustments offer the best opportunity to complete a full season by giving us the ability to adapt to the fluid nature of the virus and the flexibility to adjust schedules as necessary if disruptions occur," he said in an article published on the conference website. "It is regrettable that some of our traditional non-conference rivalries cannot take place in 2020 under this plan, but these are unique, and hopefully temporary, circumstances that call for unconventional measures."