“The SEC backs the Vax!” SEC football coaches believe that their players will be safe from Covid, but worry because their states are a disaster

… “The SEC backs the Vax”

With the college football season approaching, coaches are wary of many aspects of the 2021 regimen. 

However, the first of those is simple: Getting through a complete season without losing players or games because of Covid. 

That means that coaches have attempted to convince all of their players to take a vaccine, and in many cases, it has worked. 

However, nowhere is it more challenging than in the Southeast Conference for a simple reason: Geography — along with politics. 

“The SEC backs the Vax!”

The problem for coaches is that the players do not live in a vacuum. They must deal with students and professors and fans who have resisted taking the Covid vaccine. 

And these schools are located in the states with the lowest vaccination rates in the country,

Welcome to the newfound plight of the SEC and all of college football—convincing athletes, coaches, administrators and now, the community, to get vaccinated. As the COVID-19 delta variant creeps across the country and the 2021 season inches closer, college football officials have sprung into this frantic mission.

Signs are troubling enough around the country that SEC officials are already preparing to rescind changes to policies they had just passed months ago. The league had originally created a protocol allowing teams that met an 85% vaccination rate to eschew all regular COVID-19 testing and masking.

Soon, that will change under a proposal that has not yet been approved, league officials tell Sports Illustrated. All of those athletes who are not vaccinated would remain in the conference’s surveillance testing program, even if their programs are at the threshold. More changes may be coming. The mask mandate, originally lifted for those teams at 85% vaccination, could be re-imposed, especially on road trips.

Ross Dellenger, “SEC face with worrying vaccination trends as football season approaches,” Sports Illustrated, July 20, 2021

Problem is the states — and the fans

The difficulty is that those players interact with fans and students and others who go into bars and interact with those who have not been vaccinated. This means that full stadiums can become super-spreader events that will be problematic with the new Delta Variant running rampant through many of those states,

Leagues are working to hit an immunity rate to protect their athletes and avoid any in-season game disruptions such as last year, when about one-fifth of games were either canceled, delayed or moved.

For now, most conferences, including the SEC, are issuing a warning to its teams this summer: If a team cannot field enough players to compete in a game, that team will forfeit, instead of the game being deemed a no-contest. It’s yet another incentive to get athletes springing into medical facilities to get the shot.

While several SEC football teams are trending in a strong direction with vaccination rates—six of 14 are at least at 80%—their communities are not, stirring fear that game days will transform into super spreader events or that stadiums will remain partially empty. In fact, the very state in which SEC media days are held this week has the worst vaccination rate in the country at 33.7% of its eligible population. Four of the five worst states in America are in the league’s footprint, including Mississippi (33.8%), Arkansas (35.4%) and Louisiana (36.2%), well below the national rate of 49.2%.

Ross Dellenger, Sports Illustrated, July 20, 2021

Coaches, A.D.’s oppose most fans

While the coaches and administrators are preaching to take the vaccine, they are talking to people who do not agree with them either because of politics or stubbornness. One of those preaching for the SEC is a top infectious disease doctor,

At several speaking engagements last week in Louisiana, O’Neal said, “If you don't choose the vaccine, you're choosing death.”

“This virus will spread through us until we are vaccinated,” she says.

Gary Cosby Jr./Imagn Content Services, LLC

Using a sports analogy, O’Neal compares the vaccine to a game-winning sacrifice bunt. While most healthy adults under the age of 50 will not grow seriously ill if they are infected, they can still spread the virus at rates higher than those vaccinated.

“You do it because the team advances. We’ve got to start thinking like a team,” says O’Neal. “The 40-year-olds and 50-year-olds who get it and will be fine, they are the ones who go to work sick. They are the super spreaders.

Ross Dellenger, Sports Illustrated, July 20, 2021

However, the coaches and administrators and physicians are talking to people in states who resist this. 

Consequently, the future of the SEC season, one in which one missed game could cost teams a shot at a conference or national title, is in flux right now — and Nick Saban and others know it.