Alabama, like most of college football, is still in game-on mode for fall.
Photo: Vasha Hunt/Associated PressAlabama’s blockbuster opening game has been canceled, the football team has weathered a mini-outbreak of Covid-19 and the Crimson Tide’s celebrity coach is urging Alabamians to wear masks as the coronavirus pandemic surges all around him.
But Alabama, like most of college football, is still in game-on mode for fall. The reason: it thinks its campus is the safest place for athletes at the moment, not the riskiest.
“It’s been interesting, the narrative from some that feels that maybe we should not be competing or training,” said Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne. “What I can tell you is we are doing everything we can to support our student athletes right now.”
In Tuscaloosa, shared training equipment is immediately disinfected after use. Players are tested frequently (the university declined to say how often) and receive results from a PCR swab test within 24 hours of sampling thanks to the university securing ample testing capacity. Elsewhere in the country, wait times can stretch over a week.
Byrne says campus may be safer than home in part because he and Saban have been aggressive about pushing masks, thinking it was the best way to ensure a season.
“Coach Saban and I had been talking and we had seen the transmission rates on some of the reports when people were using face coverings or the lack thereof,” he said. “We want our community to do it. And we felt that this was the best opportunity to move forward this year.”
The Crimson Tide has already faced plenty of obstacles in mounting a season, however.
The majority of the football team arrived on campus in early June, but things got off to a rocky start. Multiple players tested positive for Covid-19 in the days before voluntary workouts began on June 8. The source of the mini outbreak was reportedly a pick-up football game between about three dozen athletes that occurred in the interim between when players were tested and when they received their results.
Alabama would not confirm the number of cases and has not disclosed subsequent test results, citing privacy concerns.
“If perfection is the only acceptable expectation through this then we are going to struggle,” said Byrne. “Whether they are here on our campuses or whether they’re back at home, because of what is going on with covid there is the opportunity for them to be infected with it just like anybody else in our society.”
About a month into training, Alabama’s first game of the season, a mega-matchup with USC in Cowboys Stadium on Sept. 5, was canceled when the Pac-12 Conference called off all nonconference competition. Byrne was still searching for a replacement opponent in late July when the SEC announced that it would scrap its 12-game slate in lieu of a 10-game, 13-week conference schedule beginning on Sept. 26. Alabama will add games against Missouri and at Kentucky, the dates of which will be settled next week.
Complicating matters for Alabama is the status of Bryant-Denny Stadium, where a $107 million renovation has been under way since November 2019. Construction crews have been scrambling to complete the upgrades by Sept. 12, when Alabama’s home opener was scheduled to take place against Georgia State, but have at least two more weeks of wiggle room with the SEC’s revised schedule.
But coronavirus outbreaks among workers have twice stalled construction in recent months, crunching an already tight timeline. Crews are now working up to 70 hours per week to get Tuscaloosa’s crown jewel ready for game day.
Byrne is eager to let fans experience the refurbished stadium in-person this fall, with modifications.
“Regardless of what the capacity ends up being, the reality is that face coverings are going to have to be something that fans embrace on game days,” he said.
Alabama typically fills over 65% of its more than 101,000-seat stadium with donor season ticket holders, who renewed at a 90% rate this spring. Add in about 17,000 students per game and Bryant Denny is at about 82% capacity. Byrne knows that not all of those people will fit if capacity is limited, but is taking a “wait and see” approach and will determine within the next two weeks how many Crimson Tide faithful will be permitted to watch games in person.
Alabama typically fills over 65% of its more than 101,000-seat stadium with donor season ticket holders.
Photo: Andrew Harnik/Associated PressAlabama has concluded that getting anyone into the stadium—fans or players—will require adherence to public-health protocols. Research shows that face coverings are most effective in mitigating the spread of coronavirus when they are worn en masse.
That’s why Saban felt it was important to use his platform as perhaps the most powerful man in Alabama. In addition to the mask selfies the university has shared of Saban on social media, the SEC has pushed out pictures of the league’s other 13 coaches in school-themed face coverings.
Byrne says he has about 20 masks in his closet and last month updated his Twitter profile to show him in a crimson neck gaiter with white script “A”s. The state of Alabama implemented a mask advisory on July 15, 54 days after Saban and sports medicine director Jeff Allen first asked the university’s plush elephant mascot Big Al to put on a mask indoors.
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Write to Laine Higgins at laine.higgins@wsj.com
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