NCAA: Schools must honour opt-out eligibility

The NCAA has said that schools must honour athletes’ scholarships if they choose to opt out of the 2020 season on health concerns, the ruling body said in a release. It added that should that happen, the scholarship MUST be honoured by the university, putting paid to worries that a player who opted-out would simply lose his scholarship – funnily enough costing teams leverage, but actually doing the right thing. Also, it said that schools “may not require student-athletes to waive their legal rights regarding COVID-19 as a condition of athletics participation”, which puts paid to a lot of schools asking players to sign waivers. Other measures included the requiring schools to cover COVID-19-related medical expenses for student athletes “to

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SEC opts for a ten-game, conference-only 2020 schedule

The powers-that-be at the SEC have decided on a ten-game, conference-only schedule for 2020. Although there have been no schedule released – we can probably expect them to come next week. The decision meant that the season will start on September 26th – a month after Big 12 and three weeks after the Big Ten. South Carolina Board of Trustees member Chuck Allen told The Athletic (via Twitter): “My understanding is the vote was 13-1 with our president, Bob Caslen, being the sole dissenting vote and part of the reason for his dissenting vote was the rivalry with Clemson.” Either the SEC is waiting for another month to try and ‘get’ the numbers lower, or they are stupid. Why stupid?

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The SEC should follow Ohio State’s example

Ohio State put out what their plan for college football games should be during games. Capacity will be capped at 20%. The capacity at The Horseshoe will be no more than 20,988 at any one time. There will be no tailgating. Face covering will be required at games.   Now, while you can enforce the first one, stopping 20,000 people going into local Columbus bars before games isn’t an option, so you’ll have to trust them. You can enforce the third one, by either supplying Ohio State facemasks at the game or not letting people who won’t wear them or booting those who persistently don’t wear them during the game. The SEC should do the same. Yes, we know that

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Big Ten, Pac-12, ACC are moving to Conference-only games

And so the dominos continue to fall. According to multiple media sources, the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 have all decided that they will play a nine-game conference-only season It is an effort to cut down the season and make it work, as well as give schools some wiggle-room if there an outbreak of COVID-19 on teams and campuses. For the SEC a bunch of non-conference games will be affected, including (sadly), Clemson vs South Carolina, Georgia vs Georgia Tech, Louisville vs Kentucky and Florida State vs Florida. Notre Dame have been told that the ACC will accommodate Notre Dame in its own schedule. For the Big Ten the biggest match-ups being lost are Notre Dame’s game with Wisconsin, Penn

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Ivy League cancels fall season: Will the dominoes fall?

The Ivy League has cancelled its fall sports. Not postponed, cancelled. Everyone in college football is taking a breath, now. You might think that a bunch of rich schools cancelling sports isn’t a big thing. After all: Harvard? Yale? Who cares. They aren’t going pro on ESPN or anything (unless they are Ryan Fitzpatrick)… But remember the Ivy League in March? They were the first to cancel their tournament because of COVID-19, and it created a domino effect that led to the cancellation of March Madness. Could this happen in college football with the Ivy League schools taking these extraordinary measures? Yes and no. The ‘Yes’ is the fact that what the Ivy League is very good at getting out

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Alabama WR transfers to Mississippi State

Former Alabama wide receiver Tyrell Shavers is transferring to Mississippi State. He will be available to play for Mike Leach’s offense immediately – which means he’ll be able to catch balls from CJ Costello, the former Stanford starter who transferred to Starkville earlier this year. He has two years of eligibility left after redshirting in 2017. In 2018 Shavers played in all 13 games but didn’t have a statistic, and he appeared in all of Alabama’s games in 2019, but only had a 14 yard rush and a 20 yard catch to his name, and recovered a blocked punt for a touchdown. While that is sad for him, if you look at Alabama’s wide receiving corps during 2018 and 2019,

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Three Auburn players test COVID-19 positive

Three Auburn players have tested positive for the novel Coronavirus, the school has said. The players – as usual with these cases – have not been named – are isolating themselves from the team. The Auburn news is hardly a surprise in the State of Alabama, which has been furiously opening up. Last week five Alabama players tested positive for COVID-19.

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Why the college football season will DEFINITELY go ahead

Earlier on Saturday Fox Sports’ writer Joel Klatt tweeted: “The college football season will 100% go ahead…. Fans will be in the stands at some capacity in most of the stadiums….The season will likely start on time”. Of course, everybody jumped on this like Klatt’s words were gospel, and he had to basically write a tweet back to Reddit’s CFB board saying: ‘These are just ‘thoughts’”. It didn’t take time for Clay Travis to snipe at all the other sportswriters, effectively saying that it was bad news for other college football writers that the season wouldn’t go ahead. Someone forgot to say to him: Why would college football reporters not want a season to go ahead, bearing in mind college

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The forgotten men of great SEC teams

For good or for bad, SEC people can bend your ear until they’ve practically ripped it off about the Cam Newtons, Tim Tebows, Reggie Whites, Trent Richardsons and Tuas of memory. Of course Georgia fans will regale you with stories about Herschel, ‘Florida men’ will even talk about Spurrier’s frighteningly good offenses, and someone from Arkansas might chime about Darren McFadden. But there are the forgotten men. It goes without saying that most offensive and defensive linesmen are these ‘forgotten men’, but every team who’s won a National Championship tend to have a good offensive line. It helps with putting up the points. So please don’t get annoyed if we ignore them. We’re not going to just doing National Championships

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What happened to these SEC greats?

In life, there are SEC players we remember. We all know what happened to Peyton Manning, Matt Stafford and Julio Jones. On the other hand, we remember – sadly – what happened to Aaron Hernandez. But there are some players where you sit there and think: “Damn! What happened to these guys. They were GOOD in college”. So here are your players. We’ve gone with one or two per SEC team. So if you’ve got any further ideas, let us know. ALABAMA Tyrone Prothro: Playing in Tuscaloosa from 2003 to 2005, Prothro pulled off one of the most memorable, brilliant catches in 2002. It was so good it had me in tears. Then again, so did his career-ending injury that made

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