Opinion: Blame The Gators environment for the LSU postponement

“I don’t want to speculate as to what the mindset was, I really think it’s, it could be as simple as not understanding symptoms. And, you know, I know people personally who have had the sniffles and a friend of theirs, were, you know, was a COVID positive so they went got testing done that they had and they they thought they just had, you know, something pretty common. So understanding, you know, your own body and being on the lookout to be suspicious when you do have any kind of abnormality whether it’s a headache or sniffles or fatigue, whatever it may be, you know, as a college student, you have those things and it’s not uncommon. But in a COVID environment, it’s so important that we are hyper sensitive to being diligent on that front so I don’t know that this was a situation where someone goes, ‘I don’t feel well but I’m going to power through it,’ this a situation where someone felt like I got a sniff on a Kleenex and I’m ready to go play a game.”

That was Scott Stricklin, Florida’s AD, on a press conference after it was released that the game with LSU had been postponed.

What no-one asked him on the press conference was the Alligator In The Room: “OK, so are your kids so goddamn stupid that they didn’t seem to understand that ‘The Sniffles’ might be something like, say, THE SIGN OF A VIRUS THAT HAS KILLED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, or was in the fact that no-one repeatedly told them to? And if not, why not?”

The timeline? Three players got on a team plane with COVID-19, and then a few days later, a quarter of the team got it. Ten more had to be quarantined. And two assistants got it, too. Thankfully no-one has been hospitalized, but it still isn’t a great look.

Why did no-one stop the players who had the sniffles or boot them off the plane? Why wasn’t anyone checking the players or testiing them before they embarked? Why did they trust a student athlete to tell the truth, and test them anyway?

 

I mean, it’s not as though that Gators coach Dan Mullen couldn’t see what the virus could do. After all, all he had to do was check, you know, THE NEWS.

But Mullen was so pissed off at ‘the virus’ that he blamed it – Texas A&M’s fans for the reason why Florida’s inept defense capitulated to Texas A&M in the second half of the team’s 41-38 loss. ”

“I know our governor passed that rule so certainly, hopefully, the university administration decides to let us pack The Swamp … Hundred percent, because that crowd was a major factor in the game, and so, I certainly hope our university administration follows the governor”. He added: “Our governor has passed a rule that we’re allowed to pack the Swamp. We have 90,000 in The Swamp to give us that home-field advantage that Texas A&M had today.”

With Mullen’s logic, is it any surprise that Florida would be part of one of the SEC’s cancellations this season?