A&M, SEC not ready to give up on fall football.
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M’s football coaches this week began monitoring players’ strength and conditioning workouts for up to eight hours a week, per NCAA rules, ever hopeful that A&M chancellor John Sharp’s edict of “make it happen” for on-campus class and football this fall actually happens.
Around the same time over in Birmingham, Ala., Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey was abiding by the adage “good things come to those who wait” in holding off on any decisions for the league’s football season.
“We believe that late July will provide the best clarity for making the important decisions ahead of us,” Sankey said after an in-person meeting with his 14 athletic directors at the conference’s office in Birmingham.
The conference did delay the start of cross country, volleyball and soccer until Aug. 31 but is leaving football open.
Within about two weeks, the SEC must decide if it’s going to try a conference-games only approach like the Big Ten and Pac-12, or if it will continue to hold out hope of playing at
least 11 or 12 games in the regular season as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on.
A&M, scheduled to open its season Sept. 5 against Abilene Christian at Kyle Field, already has lost one nonconference opponent in the Pac-12’s Colorado, a game that was scheduled for Sept. 19 at Kyle Field.
“(It was a) great discussion about what we know, what we don’t know, what we think, what we are planning for and what we are hopeful for,” A&M athletic director Ross Bjork posted to social media after the meeting with his peers and Sankey. “All as safe as possible.”
During a week typically reserved for the annual merriment officially dubbed SEC Media Days, scheduled for Atlanta this year but canceled because of the pandemic, LSU coach Ed Orgeron instead was holding court with Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday in Baton Rouge, La.
“We have our team back, and they’re ready to go,” Orgeron told Pence during a panel discussion at Tiger Stadium that also included Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and LSU athletic director Scott Woodward. “We need football — we need to play. This state needs it, and this country needs it.” Pence concurred. “It’s important not just for student-athletes or schools like LSU, but it’s important for America,” said Pence, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate. “I don’t have to tell all the SEC fans in the room that the American people love football.”
What are the chances they’re going to see it later this summer and on into fall and winter at the college level? Sankey said that’s going to take a team effort in the next few weeks from college football fans and nonfans alike after a spike in cases nationwide in the heat of summer.
“The public health trends are not what we had hoped, not what we were seeing in May and June,” Sankey told SEC Network commentator Paul Finebaum. “There has to be more intent and more focus on heeding the guidance that has been provided on distancing and gathering (regarding) face masks, breathing masks and hand sanitization.”
Based on a favorable schedule, at least compared with last season when then-national champion Clemson was part of the nonconference slate and annual contender Georgia was A&M’s SEC East foe, 2020 shapes up as the Aggies’ best chance for their first title of any kind since joining the league in 2012.
Their remaining nonconference foes are Abilene Christian, North Texas and Fresno State. Chances are Fresno State will do likewise, and the Aggies will look to fill both slots — or not, depending on the SEC’s directive by early August. Orgeron, who won a national championship last season with LSU, said the Tigers are ready to roll whenever the season starts.
“We have a mantra here; we don’t blink,” Orgeron said on WWL Radio in New Orleans. “You just tell us where to play. If it’s in a cow pasture, at midnight, three in the morning … we’re gonna go play.”
At this point Tigers fans and LSU antagonists alike would happily accept any one of those three options.