Sankey: 2020 football season still on
The COVID-19 virus pandemic has caused a wave of uncertainty around the sports world.
Leagues, conferences and tournaments around the world have canceled or postponed events, including the Southeastern Conference. However, the SEC has not yet thought about changing the 2020 schedule.
“My focus is on preparing for the season as scheduled,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said Wednesday on his teleconference.
“My hope is that we can return to our normal organized activities, experiences, and be part of that celebration around soccer, volleyball, cross country, and football in the fall."
The NCAA has already canceled all the spring sports national championships as well as the College basketball tournament in March. Although the SEC announced on Tuesday that the rest of the 2019-2020 academic sports schedule was canceled, which means no more Spring football game, pro days, baseball and softball etc. They have yet to make any changes in regards to spring practice.
The SEC has suspended all practices and team meetings until April 15.
Sankey is"not overly optimistic" that things will be back to normal by April 16 for spring football to start.
If there is no spring practice, Sankey told reporters that if teams do not have spring ball, they will find ways to make sure players are ready for the season.
“I’m a (glass) half-full perspective person. I have optimism. We have taken measures, as have our colleague conferences at this time," he explained. "I think if I read those health leaders, we’ll have a period of time to look at the growth of theses cases and we’ll make a decision down the road. For me, my possibility is to continue to support public health decision-making but also be prepared to do our work as assigned to us."
With spring sports on hold, the conference is using this time to make sure they have built contingencies in place.
“One, to be focused on the work we have," Sankey said about the next steps. "The second is to make sure we’re prepared for next year as planned and the third is to engage in big picture thinking, which is contingency planning but also strategic planning.”
The SEC Commissioner is optimistic that the conference's football media days will go as planned in Atlanta from July 13-16 - adding that the league is focused on everything returning to normal for the fall. The conference would be relying on input from public health officials before any decisions are made; they will also look to other leagues to see how they are approaching things.
"We'll have to see."