As the SEC season looms, the Big 12 gives us stark news

With the SEC season looming, there are some worrying signals out of the Big 12 that this season won’t be straightforward as we might have hoped.

For this Saturday’s start of the Big 12 and ACC seasons, already TCU has postponed its game with SMU, Baylor has postponed its game with Louisiana Tech, and Oklahoma State has done the same with Tulsa.

All of the delays have been attributed to COVID-19.

The most recent – and most unfortunate – one of these postponements was Louisiana Tech vs Baylor.  Louisiana Tech, based in Ruston, LA, was hard-hit by Hurricane Laura, which took out 90% of the area for 7-10 days, sending athletes scurrying to seek other places to live. That sent COVID cases flying up to 38 cases from the 1 that the school had experience pre-Hurricane.

The Tulsa/OSU game was moved to September 19th from September 12th because Tulsa had to pause practice for nine days after a raft of COVID-19 tests.

TCU also said that a group of athletes and training staff had tested positive for the disease – which must have been annoying for a SMU team that had gone through protocols successfully before their win over Texas State the week before.

*****

SEC fans must be thinking: “Why do I care? It’s the Big 12”, but it’s more than likely that if we don’t see games postponed, teams will feel the impact of COVID-19, bearing in mind protocols that enforce parts of the teams into quarantine if a member of a unit has tested positive.

For that reason Tennessee’s scrimmage at Neyland Stadium was cancelled last Saturday, and Auburn and LSU have experienced a great deal of problems. It won’t be surprising if most of the schools have had the problem …. although Auburn, LSU and Tennessee have been the only ones open about it.