Mama, I got ‘dem COVID blues.

SI.com’s Ross Dellenger has a draft of the medical document the Power 5 conferences have prepared to add uniformity to virus testing protocols and response procedures.  I’ve read his piece and all I can think is that it’s going to be very tough for a school to play football uninterrupted this year.

• College teams will be required to test football players within 72 hours of games using the standard PCR test.
• Those who test positive must isolate for at least 10 days from their onset of symptoms/positive test and until they’ve gone at least three days without symptoms.
• Those found to have had “high risk” contact with people who have tested positive will quarantine for 14 days. This 14-day quarantine is mandatory. Even if those quarantined test negative for the virus, they must still complete the 14 days without competition.

That’s not even the toughest part.  This is:

The document details several conditions that would result in a school discontinuing competition and/or complete seasons: 1) lack of ability to isolate new positive cases or quarantine high-contact risk cases on campus; 2) inability to perform weekly testing; 3) campus-wide or local community test rates that are considered unsafe by local public health officials; 4) inability to perform adequate contact tracing; 5) local public health officials state that there is an inability for the hospital infrastructure to accommodate a surge in COVID-related hospitalizations.

“Nos. 3 and 5 are a great concern for athletic administrators.”  No shit, Sherlock.

Just rolling in

USA Today has its chart for 2018-9 college athletic finances posted.  At $174,042,482, Georgia is fifth in revenue — not in the SEC, but nationally.

Here’s what the SEC, minus private school Vanderbilt, looks like, in order of revenue:

Last column is expenses.  That’s a $30 million positive net B-M turned, give or take a few pennies.  Plus, the athletic department transferred $5 million to the school in 2019.  Cha-ching!

Full speed ahead

It may be whistling in the dark, but for now, Georgia and Florida are sticking with Jacksonville.

Georgia and Florida athletic directors have indicated the schools’ annual rivalry game will remain in Jacksonville this season amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

UGA athletic director Greg McGarity told DawgNation on Thursday that plans are for Kirby Smart and his Bulldogs to make the 339-mile trip to Jacksonville as scheduled.

“Scott (Stricklin) and I spoke about this on Monday and agreed the game would remain in Jacksonville,” McGarity said.

As for fans, who knows?

UF athletic director Scott Stricklin said Tuesday that possibility hasn’t even come up between the two schools.

“Really haven’t had any conversation about moving it out of Jacksonville,” he said. “I know that I saw in the news somewhere that the Jags had a reduced seating capacity planned. I’m sure that’s something that if we get to the point where we’re playing that game there that we would try and use as appropriate depending on where we are in the process and what the requirements are.

“We really haven’t had any conversations about moving it to campus. Our hope is to be able to play the game and to be able to play it in Jacksonville in some form.”

Save them, college athletes. You’re their only hope.

As if the unpaid help doesn’t have enough on their plate…

Pretty sure I know whom he refers to when he says “we”.

When the shit comes down…

So, what do you get when you hit up Okie State with a FOIA request for all documents related to Gundygate?  A lot of entertainment, it seems.

My favorite thing of all — after the firestorm is ignited, someone at OAN emails Gundy for an interview.  Hilarity ensues.

3:45 P.M. Amazingly, OAN’s Chief White House Correspondent sends an email to Gundy — who is now squarely in the firestorm — asking if he would be available for an interview that upcoming weekend when President Trump is in Tulsa for his first, post-pandemic rally. Chanel Rion is an optimist — or something:

Folks, you know what they say: Shooters shoot.

When you have less of a clue than Mike Gundy, that’s saying something.

Your Daily Gator has proof.

This ought to stir the pot today.

It’s incredibly frustrating (as a Florida fan) to know that all the numbers point towards having a better on-field coach but getting your butt kicked repeatedly on the recruiting trail. But I’d be equally frustrated as a Georgia fan watching Smart blow the immense talent advantage he has against teams Georgia has no business losing to.

Well, except for one team.

None of this takes away the fact that Georgia has now won three straight against Florida, two against Mullen. It turns out, Smart’s teams are able to flex their muscles against teams with slightly less talent than them.

“There are crazy times.”

There is so much to unpack from this deep dive into what Sankey and the 14 SEC ADs discussed Monday.  A few choice quotes:

• “Barring a full, 12-game schedule, three models emerged as strong possibilities with league power brokers: an eight-game conference-only schedule and a nine or 10-game plan that would preserve at least one scheduled matchup with a Power 5 conference program.”
• “The SEC has already lost two Power 5 games with the Pac-12’s decision to hold a conference-only season: Alabama-USC and Texas A&M-Colorado. The league is attempting to preserve its remaining 13 Power 5 conference games, including the aforementioned four Sept. 12 games and most notably the four traditional rivalries with the ACC: Georgia-Georgia Tech, Florida-Florida State, South Carolina-Clemson and Kentucky-Louisville. The other five games are Arkansas-Notre Dame, Georgia-Virginia, Ole Miss-Baylor, Missouri-BYU and Vanderbilt-Kansas State.”
• “Despite rising case numbers nationwide, with many hotspots in the SEC’s 11-state footprint, the consensus among administrators is that their communities and athletes are strongly in favor of playing football this fall.”
• “In a 10-game all-SEC slate, teams would keep their scheduled eight conference games while adding two more teams from the opposite division. In this scenario, an SEC team would play all but three of its conference members. One athletic director described this plan as laughable. Even a nine-game conference-only schedule is getting pushback from league administrators, the AD says.”
• “Some SEC decision-makers question the logic of a conference-only schedule. A few conference games call for long, expensive trips – such as South Carolina-Texas A&M and Florida-Missouri – while several non-conference, non-Power 5 affairs are regionalized. Auburn has a game with Southern Miss, and Mississippi State hosts Alabama A&M. South Carolina has both East Carolina and Coastal Carolina on its schedule, and Texas A&M plays North Texas.”
• “Meanwhile, many SEC leaders are vehemently against a spring season, describing it as a “last resort” and a “fallback measure” that poses a range of issues…”

Not exactly an emerging consensus there.  Instead, it sounds like a struggle between money and player safety.  As for which wins out…

Many of these contingency models call for the elimination of games against Group of 5 and FCS teams. These are often referred to as “buy games” because SEC teams pay steep prices—sometimes as much as $1.5 million a game—to their traveling competitors. In fact, SEC teams in 2017 paid out more than $45 million in buy games, according to school NCAA reports obtained by SI. This year, Georgia is the only SEC school with two Power 5 programs on its schedule. All other teams play three games against Group of 5 or FCS squads. SEC teams could owe millions to those smaller clubs for cancellations. However, there is a potential out. In at least some game contracts, a change in “league scheduling format” could free an SEC team from its contractual responsibility, several administrators told SI.

That legal language still could meet opposition from snubbed Group of 5 and FCS opponents if the SEC does move ahead with any non-conference games. If the league can play Power 5 opponents, the thinking goes, why can’t it play the others? Or at least honor the payout written into the game contract? From the standpoint of avoiding legal battles over millions in guarantees for games that don’t happen, the SEC might be better off with no non-conference games at all.

There you go — Georgia shedding its rivalry game with Tech in order to have a defense to being sued by ETSU for its guarantee is about as good a summary of 2020 as you can imagine.

Evergreen wisdom

It comes up in an article about spring football and the resulting possibility of players opting out to train for the NFL draft rather than play college ball ($$), but really, is there a situation involving the NCAA when you couldn’t use this quote?

One Power 5 assistant coach said, “It is a mess, and we have no leadership from the NCAA. It’s a damn joke.”

Superman

I wish the gap closers could explain something to me.

One of the elite defenses of the past decade — and that’s saying something, if you think about it — brings back something like 80% of its production this season and supplements that with top three recruiting class talent, and yet somehow we’re supposed to believe that Kyle Trask all by his lonesome is going to make a seriously bigger dent in it than he did last year?

Thursday morning buffet

Around the horn in college football:

• Phil Steele takes a victory lap. (Bonus, on Georgia’s quarterback battle:  “I’m going with Newman. He’s been in Athens all year, and he’s a quality quarterback who did a great job at Wake Forest last year.”)
• Gary Stokan, as always, is here to help.
• To those who think LSU is in line for a major slide on offense this season, Ian Boyd says not so fast.
• The NCAA and Power 5 commissioners are expected to release a report that includes medical recommendations for COVID testing.
• This week, in secondary recruiting violations at Georgia.
• Get ready to hear the NCAA again say it’s not in the protecting players business.
• If you thought that Florida-Georgia simulation (41-18) was pretty nuts, you’ll really love the Clemson-Notre Dame one.