Clemson football almost at 85 percent vaccination threshold rate

The Clemson football program has been making strides in terms of its vaccination rates for the upcoming 2021 season.

Dabo Swinney told the media at ACC Media Days a couple of weeks ago that the Tigers were in good shape, but they hadn’t quite reached the threshold of 85 percent.

At the first practice of the preseason for Clemson football on Friday, Swinney gave an update saying that the Tigers were at the 83-84 percent mark and that a couple more players would be getting vaccinated this weekend, which in turn would push Clemson over that 85 percent threshold.

How vaccines could be the difference in a successful 2021 Clemson football season

We’re not here to talk about anything other than the football aspect of the vaccines and the truth is that the number put forth by the NCAA and the ACC, for that matter, has been 85 percent as far as threshold for programs looking to have a little more normalcy this year.

The NCAA’s recommendations given earlier this summer were that if a team and its staff members achieve 85 percent immunity, they would no longer have to take the same precautions in terms of masking and distancing. In addition, fully vaccinated athletes do not have to undergo routine testing.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey shared that the conference isn’t planning to make up games this year and that teams who have outbreaks could be forced to forfeit games. Could ACC commissioner Jim Phillips take a similar approach?

While the ACC has not released its official parameters for the upcoming season, what we do know is that the 85 percent mark is going to be an important threshold and a major difference maker for programs throughout the conference.

In the strictest football sense, having higher vaccination numbers gives teams less likely chances of an outbreak and, in turn, you hopefully don’t end up with situations where your starting quarterback, for example, is out for two weeks, similar to what we saw with Trevor Lawrence last year.