The Southeastern Conference university presidents will vote on an undetermined date whether players will be able to return to campus on either June 1 or June 15, LSU Executive Deputy Athletic Director Verge Ausberry told the Louisiana Economic Recovery Task Force Thursday morning.
Ausberry, who also serves as LSU’s Executive Director of External Relations, told the task force that the athletic department is aiming to return its players to campus on June 1, something athletic director Scott Woodward had also said in the department’s virtual Coaches Caravan Wednesday night.
If this sounds pretty seat of the pants to you, it’s only because it is.
“We are preparing for a June 1 return, even though we don’t know that,” Woodward said. “The prohibition’s in place for the SEC for us not to use facilities until May 31. When that prohibition comes up, which hopefully won’t be extended, and, if it is, we’ll be read for that too. But I see some time in June our student-athletes getting back to campus and us taking care of them.”
I presume the players don’t get a vote. Sure hope this ends well for all concerned.
(h/t)
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UPDATE:
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UPDATE #2:
Get The Picture 
Not gonna be much of an argument that players aren’t employees if students aren’t allowed back on campuses.
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I agree. And I am a self professed romantic.
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They’ll dance around that just like they dance around “voluntary” off-season workouts. College athletes are required to do all kinds of things the regular student body isn’t required to do. The scholarship may not be worth market value, but it’s still a contractual obligation. I’m solidly in the athlete side of the NIL camp, but there’s plenty of leverage the University has under the status-quo to require the players to be there when the student body isn’t. The student body isn’t there for practice in August, either.
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Players can stay home if they wish. No president is going to take the heat about requiring a player to come back.
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And cases continue to go down in my area…the world may not end as soon as we think, especially for those under 70.
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Unless every SEC football player has been staying near you, I’m not really sure how helpful that data point is. 😉
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I think most of the South is seeing improvement…
But you don’t think a metro ATL County is relevant? Fair enough.
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There isn’t a single state in the South that’s in compliance with the White House guidelines about reopening.
Again, I don’t have any problem with hope, but this sounds more like the beginnings of a plan of action and I doubt the presidents know enough definitively to embark on a course like that.
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This^.
They’re going to open the campuses this fall come hell or high water.
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I’m wondering if the thinking goes like this. . .
Get ’em on campus so we can expose everyone on the team to the virus. They’re young and healthy and symptoms should be mild. Then, we’re golden in terms of the season. We can control everything!
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Most of the athletes I’ve seen polled want to return sooner rather than later (excluding MLB, in which the fight is primarily over money). These kids all bask in the warming glow of perceived invincibility. I’m not saying the adults shouldn’t know better. I just don’t know that the kids would vote any different.
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Wow this sounds great! Sounds like we are going to see some football this fall which sounds good to me!
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Why the WTF?
Let’s get everything back to normal. Whole thing has been WTF from the get go.
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A WTF moment – really – tell that to the families and friends of the 86,000 + Americans that died in 75 days. They weren’t all grandma’s and grandpa’s.
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Haven’t they heard that going outside LITERALLY KILLS GRANDMOTHERS!
The only ethical thing to do is cancel your Hartman fund account and sell your tickets on Stubhub.
To encourage these death merchants is grotesque
#WEAREINTHISTOGETHER
Am I doing it right?
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old man yells at cloud because he wants his football
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The fear mongering has worn off… time to get back to our lives. As more and more data comes out, it keeps and will keep proving this virus is not nearly as bad or deadly as everyone wanted us to believe it was. I know… SHOCKER. Time to move on from the Chinese bat flu and actually LIVE.
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I had a friend die of the Chinese Nat Flu earlier this week so…..
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*Bat
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Sorry for your loss, Mayor.
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A doctor and a nurse I know obliquely (have met but are more friends of friends) have died of this. Quite easy to be cavalier about others lives.
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I mean at least 2x the number of people killed in Vietnam are dead from this in 10 weeks. It’s not like this has been nothing.
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80k dead (and counting) with the most draconian control measures any of us have ever seen.
But it’s all “fear mongering”, right?
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They want to get their unpaid labor back to work asap.
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Nevermind that summer semester at UGA is online only. And that goes thru the end of July.
It just means more (money).
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I just had a guy come by the house selling the solar panel deal. Walmart never stopped being stupid. There’s no stopping people outside of full totalitarianism.
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Are we still pretending that this virus poses any significant risk to 20 year olds?
The risk of death for under 25 is less than one in a million.
They are more likely to die from football related injury than corona virus
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