How SEC cancellations might affect Clemson football
While the Clemson football team has certainly seen COVID-19 affect its season, the Tigers have yet to have a game canceled or postponed due to an outbreak.
Part of that is because Clemson football had an outbreak earlier this summer and the Tigers were able to get everything under control before fall camp came about, but that doesn’t mean things can’t change in a hurry.
Still, there has been an occasional positive test or two during a couple of weeks of the season with no name bigger than QB Trevor Lawrence, who just recently completed his quarantine period and has been cleared to practice and compete when the Tigers take the field again following an open date this Saturday.
While Clemson football has been able to control positive tests- at least to a point and we all know how quickly this can change- there are several programs around the country who have not been as successful. That has been highlighted this weekend within the SEC, where three games were canceled due to outbreaks at different programs around the conference.
In all, six Power-5 conference games (including one ACC game) have been canceled or postponed that were originally supposed to take place this week. These include:
- Alabama at LSU
- Ohio State at Maryland
- Texas A&M at Tennessee
- Georgia at Missouri
- Auburn at Mississippi State
- Georgia Tech at Pittsburgh
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey spoke with the media earlier this week following the announced postponements and said that the conference still has a target date of completing its season and playing its title game on Dec. 19 and that while he was shaken, he was not deterred about his confidence that the season can be completed.
"“It’s a difficult circumstance – no way to paint it otherwise, but we knew that challenges would emerge for college sports,” Sankey said. “They’d emerge within the Southeastern Conference, just as challenges are present across the entire society.”“We have finish lines right now,” Sankey said, before adding there’s a need “to be flexible.”"
While Clemson football and the ACC are completely removed from the SEC, that doesn’t mean they aren’t tied to one another still
We all know that the ACC and SEC aren’t playing games with one another during the regular season this year. We all know that the two conferences are completely separate entities who have had different experiences.
But we also know how- as different and unique as the two conferences are- they’ve been lumped in together when it comes to the 2020 College Football season for quite some time.
It was the ACC and the SEC that stood in the way of the Big Ten and Pac-12 when the two conferences were jockeying for the season to be canceled before practice every began. From that point, everything that happened in one conference- for good or for bad- was tied, in some way, to the other conference.
So, the bad perception that was written by media early in the season and before the season began is now back with a vengeance and all eyes will be on the SEC and ACC moving forward, specifically, as well as the Big 12. Clemson football will play a big part in that.
It’s not just about how those three conferences are eyeing completing their seasons- which by the way are much further along than the Big Ten and Pac-12- but it’s also about the prospect of a CFB Playoff where we’re obviously going to have teams judged based on a much broader scale of data than what we’ve ever seen before.
Clemson could be praised or punished for getting in a hypothetical 10, 11 or even 12 games with the ACC Championship depending on how the committee looks at the Notre Dame loss. But it’s not even about the style points, or lack thereof, that will make things difficult on the committee.
Sankey talked about the ‘need for flexibility’ all around and how an expanded playoff would make things even more difficult. Don’t think when he was talking about ‘flexibility,’ that he wasn’t looking at the committee.
The CFB Playoff committee may have to make some tough decisions, including taking teams who haven’t completely finished their regular seasons. The committee may have to move back the semifinals a matter of weeks and even look into the idea of having a ‘bubble’ where all four teams are kept while they play out the postseason.
While Clemson football expects to be in the playoff, another thing these outbreaks could do is negatively affect the remaining bowl games and potentially put us in a situation where there is no bowl season, period.
In the end, these SEC cancellations- unless they get extremely bad and we start to see more in the ACC- won’t affect the Clemson football program directly, but it will certainly affect the Tigers indirectly in every possible way- from finishing the regular season to postseason competition (dates, locations and more)- imaginable.