College football environment safest place to be during COVID-19, Clemson leaders say
With the fate of the college football season hanging in the balance, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney, quarterback Trevor Lawrence and running back Darien Rencher made their stance on the 2020 season clear Monday evening: the safest place for college football players to be is on campus preparing for the season, and the sport needs to be played this fall.
A Clemson coordinator was slated to meet with the media Monday night, but that plan was scratched so that Swinney, Lawrence and Rencher could offer their thoughts on the current state of the sport.
Swinney spoke first, making his pitch for why college football should occur this season, despite concerns associated with COVID-19.
“This is the safest environment that we could have our guys, without a doubt, as opposed to letting these guys leave and go home and be in these environments where they’re not getting tested every single week, they don’t have the type of sanitized environment that we have here, mitigated environment that we have here,” Swinney said. “We’ve had one (positive COVID-19) test since early July. And We’ve been together every day and practicing.”
Several non-Power 5 conferences have postponed their seasons in hopes of playing in the spring, and the Big 10 announced Tuesday it was canceling the fall season with the hope to play in the spring.
Swinney is against the idea of postponing the sport now in hopes of playing in the spring because he does not expect the virus to be better in time for a spring football season.
“If we cancel football the virus isn’t going to go away,” Swinney said. “If you told me that if we cancel football that nobody would get the virus, hey, I’d be the first person to sign on. But that’s not reality. The virus isn’t going away. It’s going to still be here in the spring. And we’ve done a good job here of mitigating and finding a way to work with it and to do things in a safe way so that we can do what we love to do.”
Lawrence and Rencher then joined in, echoing what their coach had to say while adding that they feel safe on campus and want to have a season this fall.
The two were a part of the “We Want to Play” movement started by Power 5 players from around the country Sunday night.
“We know there’s not an easy answer necessarily, but we really do feel safe here,” Lawrence said. “We feel safer here than anywhere else, honestly. When you go outside of these walls, when you go get food, you do anything, you’re at just as much if not more risk. We feel safe here. We want to do what we love, have some normalcy.”
The fact that playing or not playing was a subject Monday, just days after the ACC released its revised 2020 game schedule, was largely because of growing national reports from the weekend that the Big Ten was moving toward postponing its season. A Power 5 conference not playing fall sports would create a domino effect, those reports suggested, that would wipe out a college season for everyone.
Swinney and Louisville coach Scott Satterfield both met with the media Monday and suggested that just because one Power 5 conference cancels, it doesn’t mean the others will follow suit.
“I’m just trying to get my team ready. I can just tell you we’ll play whenever, whoever, whatever, anywhere,” Swinney said. “We just want to play football. We just want to do what we love to do. And as far as all that stuff, hey, that’s Dan (Radakovich) and commissioners and all that. We’re just going to keep rolling and getting ourselves ready.”
Clemson started practice Thursday. The Tigers’ first game is Sept. 12 at Wake Forest.
This story was originally published August 10, 2020 at 7:48 PM.
