Greg Byrne started to realize a couple days ago that he’d probably be getting this question at some point in the near future: Could the coronavirus pandemic cause the start date of football season to be pushed back?
As of Thursday, Alabama’s athletic director wasn’t ready to make a guess one way or the other.
“I think we’re still too early to really have strong opinions about that,” Byrne said. “All of our focus has to be on the health and wellness of everyone involved. And if we as a country do our very best to minimize the spread of this virus, that gives us the best opportunity to return to normal as a country as soon as possible. And that’s what needs to be the focus right now.”
Part of the problem from a football standpoint is that it’s still very much unclear right now when Alabama and other teams around the country will be able to even get back to organized team workouts, let alone when they will be able to get back to practicing.
While the SEC hasn’t officially canceled spring football practice, Byrne admitted Thursday it’s unlikely the Crimson Tide will be able to have any spring football practices.
“The reality is, if you look at our campuses in our conference and then if you look at most of the campuses around the country, most of them are moving towards online education only the rest of the semester,” Byrne said. “So I think the chances aren’t great (of having any spring football practices). But we haven’t made that final determination at this point. Obviously, for the health and well-being of your student-athletes, making sure they — when the time comes — to have some opportunities to be coached, to be able to learn systems, to be in physical shape to perform as an SEC athlete, all of those things are going to have to be considered as we move through this.”
Byrne has had several brainstorming sessions with Alabama coach Nick Saban during the past week, going over ideas for how they could still maybe get in some spring practices.
It’s still too early to tell what’s realistic, though.
“I think obviously you just can’t go out and play games without any practice and development time beforehand,” Byrne said. "So we’ve talked about what different scenarios look like, so I can have his thoughts, which — as you all know — he’s always very well thought out on different possibilities, different scenarios. So it’s been very helpful. But we’re still — because of where we are in the process right now — we haven’t gotten any more specific than just looking at potential scenarios.”
Matt Zenitz is an SEC football reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mzenitz.
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March 20, 2020 at 02:24AM
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Greg Byrne: ‘Too early’ to predict start date of football season - AL.com
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