SEC mandates masks on sidelines, increased testing

The SEC has announced a number of things to keep players safe during the 2020 College Football season, including increased testing and mandating masks on all sideline personnel.

Players will be tested six days and three games before days, and masks “will be required to wear face coverings on the sideline and physical distancing will be employed to the extent possible”.

Testing will be done through a third party which is has been put in (obviously) to assuage worries about schools deliberately scewing testing in their own favour.

And in its release, the SEC has also outlined what would be the factors to stop a game happening – or even a season.

They are:

• Inability to isolate new positive cases, or quarantine high risk contacts of cases of university students.
• Unavailability or inability to perform symptomatic, surveillance or pre-competition testing when warranted.
• Campus-wide or local community positivity test rates that are considered unsafe by local public health officials.
• Inability to perform adequate contact tracing consistent with local, state or federal requirements or recommendations.
• Local public health officials indicate an inability for the hospital infrastructure to accommodate a surge in COVID-19 related hospitalizations.

Of course, the SEC didn’t mandate anything about crowds or tailgating – which frankly would have also been more useful – but this is at least a start.