Caslen, Tanner break down scenarios facing Gamecocks for fall sports seasons
It’s not yet clear when college football teams will know when exactly they might next play.
But according to South Carolina Athletics Director Ray Tanner, by way of SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, the Gamecocks’ conference is looking to push that decision as late as they can.
Tanner spoke to the university’s board of trustees Friday, going into more detail on potential timelines and plans after school president Robert Caslen spoke about them.
“They’re going to wait as long as they possibly can,” Tanner said. “It could be a situation that the conferences might not be aligned due to this pandemic throughout the country and where it is. But I think it will be a late decision just based on the timing of the schedule.”
He mentioned some consideration had to be taken for preseason training, as that near-year-round process has been interrupted in a big way by the coronavirus pandemic.
Caslen had mentioned several of the models for seasons on the table, including conference-only play, starting games later in the fall or even starting after the holidays.
“There’s all kinds of different options that are out there,” Caslen said. “They did not say when they were going to make a decision. And I think they’re kind of waiting for the NCAA to see if it’s going to be a national decision or if it’s going to be left to the conferences.”
Tanner said his impression was that it could be left up to the conferences in consultation with the NCAA and other four Power 5 conferences (Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, ACC).
The sports world has been shut down since mid-March as the pandemic wiped out most of the spring sports season and the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments. South Carolina’s spring football was interrupted after one third of it was complete.
The more looming question is if sports can happen without some kind of return to normalcy on campuses. The University of Missouri has said it expects to return to regular classes in the fall, but South Carolina hasn’t yet made that call.
Caslen previously set June 15 as a deadline for deciding how USC will conduct fall classes.
“There’s just a logic stream that says if there’s no students on campus, then should student-athletes be on campus practice as well? With the emphasis on student-athletes. So that was just a logic question,” Caslen said. “If we do not have students and you’ve got football players coming back practicing and students are not allowed to come back, that may raise some concerns.”
