Commissioner: SEC told it can move forward with football, but that could change

Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey was on the Dan Patrick Show on Tuesday morning to discuss the current play-or-no-play situation in college football.

One highlight: Sankey said that, “Our medical advisory group has said, ‘Yes, we can continue to go forward.’ Were that advice to change, certainly we’d be at stopping point.”

Sankey also said he did not think it would be wise for the SEC to be the only conference playing football this fall.

“I don’t think that’s the right direction,” said the commissioner. “Could we? Certainly. So there’s a difference between can you do something and should you do something in life.”

Here’s a partial transcript:

Patrick asked how Sankey feels about the chances of playing in the fall.

“It’s a roller-coaster ride,” Sankey said. “Today probably better. We had some really healthy dialogue with athletics directors and our presidents and chancellors. Really information, because we’ve made decisions to avoid some of the time pressure I sense others are feeling. We’ve not had our players in helmets and pads for full practices. We’ve spread our preseason preparation out. We’ve moved our kickoff back to allow our universities to get back to kind of their normal fall semester order. Give them some time to think, for things to settle out.

“I felt good on Friday and then a little bit of tumult over the weekend and we’re going to keep working day-to-day to see if we can provide opportunities for student-athletes to compete.”

Sankey was asked about the reports over the weekend and Monday that the Big Ten and Pac-12 are close to canceling their fall sports seasons.

“We’ve obviously had conversation among colleagues so you have a sense of what may happen,” Sankey said. “It is information for us. That’s what it is. And I’ve said to you in my monthly appearances, every day we learn a little bit more. It is not simply going to be a guiding moment if another conference makes a decision, but a piece of information along this really, really interesting journey.”

Sankey was asked about the possibility of other schools joining the SEC this season.

“I have not spoken with anyone. I’ve seen a little bit of the social media activity since. We’re focused on our 14 members and our 10 games. Because what we’ve really done is to create kind of a quasi-bubble on our campuses for our teams to be healthy and supported it really well. And a quasi-bubble with our conference schedule. By moving later, really than anyone had at the time, to give those campus locales and communities the opportunity to welcome students back, which is really what we do, by the way, this educational thing, despite what the cynics may think. We could then start later and control the ability to play. Dan, that’s been our focus. I was amused a little bit by the amount of activity about who was playing whom in my league and I really wasn’t aware that was taking place.”

Patrick: Are the student-athletes safer by playing football?

“I certainly think we can make a case and have made a case that they are in a much more healthy situation working out in our facilities, with medical care, with health protocols around COVID in this new environment compared to go lift weights at your local gym with who knows who is overseeing you, what kind of health expectations, what kind of workout, what kind of monitoring. I think that’s really without a doubt. What we’re continuing to do is support the healthy return of competition. So we’ve had a busy few weeks. The NCAA has issued some national expectations. Last Friday, we announced health protocols to go beyond what the NCAA said is minimum. We’re looking at third-party testing opportunities so we can have independent common reporting, common testing, a lot of work to achieve that, but certainly a part of making football viable. And our medical advisory group has said, ‘Yes, we can continue to go forward.’ Were that advice to change, certainly we’d be at a stopping point. But the indicators are we can right now do what we’re doing in a healthy way and we’re going to continue to consider that central issue, health, as we move forward we hope toward competition with no assurances that will actually take place.”

Patrick asked about giving up the SEC-ACC rivalries.

“That’s the difficult part of the COVID environment,” Sankey said. “We lost a basketball tournament, a baseball season, a softball season. We lost Arkansas-Notre Dame, Texas-LSU and we lost traditional rivalries. But again in looking really objectively to ask what can we do to control our ability to play SEC — we prioritized the conference championship, and thought we also want to provide student-athletes with a quality SEC experience. That was the pivot to 10 conference-only games. A recognition that there may be disruption and the feeling that in that quasi-bubble mentality have better control and better be able to complete an entire season. Tough decisions, but we’ve been making tough decisions since March 11 around college athletics.”

Does Sankey expect to get questions about whether the Big Ten and Pac-12 care more about safety?

“Certainly. In the Southeastern Conference we certainly compete, but we educate, we care and we support. If we cannot compete, we’ll educate, care and support. But we do that every day whether we compete or not. We’ve been doing it since March. I think that message is clear right now. We’ve not been playing games but we’ve been educating, caring and supporting. And I don’t think there are quite the number of absolutes that perhaps others do in this world. We have never tried to do what we’re doing in a COVID environment. It is simply another variable in a multi-variable environment for us. Whatever we do, we’re going to do safely, we’re going to do in the most healthy way possible. That may mean some have to make decisions, whether it’s support, whether it’s the infrastructure they have. I think we have the capacity to support well. But again we’re going to go day-by-day and make sure that that’s in place because fundamentally while we want to compete, we’re not going to walk away from educating, caring and supporting young people.”

Asked what he would tell college football fans to get them off the ledge, the commissioner said, among other things, “We have set a start date, that should be encouraging to college football fans.”

And could the SEC wind up being the only conference playing college football in the fall of 2020?

“I don’t think that’s the right direction. Could we? Certainly. So there’s a difference between can you do something and should you do something in life. So we’re actually set up with our schedule, with our own health protocols, that we could if that was the circumstance to operate on our own. I’m not sure that’s the wisest direction. But there’s been a lot of interesting things that have happened since March in college sports.”