Season unlikely to halt for Hogs due to virus
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FAYETTEVILLE — The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has already altered the sports landscape and will likely be a looming threat for the foreseeable future.
Positive tests and subsequent contact-tracing quarantines have led to roughly 14 percent of all scheduled college football games being postponed or canceled, according to Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger, and it will probably also impact the college basketball season that is set to begin later this month.
The SEC has established minimums for football that require 53 available scholarship players or a game could get called off, but it’s unclear what those minimums will be in basketball - a sport that has only 13 scholarship players and less than a handful of walk-ons.
However, Arkansas coach Eric Musselman revealed Friday that he isn’t concerned about his team being hit by COVID-19 hard enough to force postponements or cancellations - on their end, at least - this season.
“We will have enough players every single night to play and we'll have enough coaches because we've had enough people that have had it,” Musselman said. “We're going to be able to play on our end.”
As of now, SEC testing protocol doesn’t require players and staff who’ve already tested positive and recovered to undergo testing the rest of the season because they are presumed to have developed an immunity to the virus.
Musselman said he and a “few” players still haven’t had it, but didn’t divulge any names other than his own. In the event he tests positive, Musselman would be replaced by one of his assistants on an interim basis. He also said he wasn’t sure what might happen if all of the players who haven’t had it all tested positive at the same time, but he described that as a “worst case” scenario.
That is likely a huge relief for the second-year coach, as Sam Pittman - the Razorbacks’ football coach - has admitted that waiting on the results of the three weekly tests is one of the most stressful parts of his job this year.
He can focus solely on getting his team ready for its Nov. 25 opener against Mississippi Valley State instead of worrying about the virus, which he believes - based on conversations with his wife, Danyelle - could be part of everyday life for quite some time.
“She tells me all the time it could be another year (before a vaccine), so all we can do is worry about the next day,” Musselman said. “Take care of the day. Wake up. Deal with tomorrow.”
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