GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Near the end of his nearly hour-long COVID-19 update Zoom call with state media Tuesday, Florida athletic director
Scott Stricklin revealed a piece of personal information that was particularly relevant given the subject at hand.
"Last month, I actually tested positive for COVID," said Stricklin, who informed his University Athletic Association staff of the news in an email Monday. "My symptoms were mild, so I never really had any anxiety. I was kind of mad at myself that I had put myself in that situation, but my family's fine. I quarantined. … I had about 48 hours where I felt really crummy and probably had another three or four days where I didn't feel like going out and running a marathon."
In time, after the virus ran its course, Stricklin was back on his jogging schedule, and back facing the day-to-day grind that is the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the world; along with the world of athletics.
In that regard, Stricklin probably feels like he's running a marathon. A marathon of uncertainty.
On Monday, Stricklin and the 13 other ADs from Southeastern Conference member institutions flew to Birmingham, Ala., for the first in-person meeting of the group since the shutdown of sports during the league's men's basketball tournament in Nashville on March 12. The ensuing 18 weeks have been a cluster of cancelations and conjecture that now has given way to mostly speculation, if not skepticism, with regard to the 2020-21 collegiate athletic calendar.
Nothing definitive came from that meeting at SEC headquarters, other than the league's commitment to keeping all parties safe, both in the interim, and if and when competition resumes.
"There's a lot of talk out there about budgets and financial needs and all that stuff. It obviously helps support what we do in college athletics, but all of that is secondary to making sure that the health of our athletes, our staff and ultimately our fans is a priority," Stricklin said. "To use a baseball analogy, we owe it to our athletes to try to run out every ground ball to figure out a way that we can get to the point where we can play games and have competition for them, but understanding we're not going to do that until we get to a point where we think their health and well-being and safety is in as good an environment as we can make it."
That point, clearly, is not in the near future. Not long after Stricklin's call,
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey announced the start of fall 2020 competition for soccer, volleyball and cross country had been delayed through Aug. 31.
As for the $4.1 billion question — as in the approximated football revenue for the athletic departments at the 50-plus public schools in the Power Five conferences, according to
USA Today — Stricklin could be as definitive with his answers as anyone else in his position.
"Candidly," he said, "we have a lot of challenges ahead of us."
On its face, that's a pretty cryptic response for anyone looking for an optimistic spin on perhaps seeing a kickoff (or even an illegal procedure penalty) anytime soon. But college administrators, Stricklin said, actually do have something ahead they could be used as a gauge (albeit, not an exact one) as to what a re-boot to games might look like.
Major League Soccer has begun. Major League Baseball is starting in less than two weeks. The NBA shortly after that — in Florida, no less — followed by the NHL. Obviously, the circumstances and logistics to the pros are apples to oranges, but there will be information to be gleaned.
"I think in a perfect world we would look at the pro leagues as providing an opportunity for us to learn," said Stricklin, acknowledging those games will be played in either so-called "bubble" conditions or in empty stadiums. "We're not going to be able to create a bubble in college athletics. College athletics, I know, is very popular and it generates a lot of attention, but it's still an extracurricular activity on a college institution's campus; an academic institution's campus. Nothing about that says 'bubble,' unless you want to consider 35 or 36,000 undergrads a 'bubble.' So the pro leagues are not an exact mirror of what we're going to be able to do, but I do think they're ability to get up successfully and compete will teach us some lessons."
Last week,
the Big Ten announced that if able to participate in fall sports that, based on medical advice, it would do so with conference-only schedules in those sports. The
Pac-12 followed suit a day later. The SEC, Atlantic Coast Conference and Big 12 have not gone so far as to make that commitment.
Did the Big Ten and Pac-12 moves catch the others off guard?
"I haven't talked to anybody in the Big Ten, and I don't know what led to their decision, but I do think it's helpful when we can try as much as possible to make decisions in concert," he said. "But college athletics, as another example, is not pro sports. We don't have a centralized governing body in areas like this. We have the NCAA, but as far as decisions that conferences make, it's more of a Federalist system. In some ways, it's more American, right? We have all these different parts of the country that decided their own direction they're going to go."
One of those directions that has been talked about, of course, is the potential of moving football to the spring. Stricklin, like everyone else in the business, was hesitant to address that subject at this time.
"None of us know if and/or when the clouds are going to part and the sun's going to shine and we're going to be able to provide that opportunity for our athletes," he said. "But whenever that occurs, being positioned to do that in the safest manner is our No. 1 priority. If that's September, great. If that's a different month in the calendar that allows us to do it in this school year, I don't think any of us are in a position to be choosy right now."
Other items discussed:
* The latest COVID numbers for the Gators showed 238 tests across all sports and 29 positives, with usually between three to eight football players under quarantine for either positive tests or symptoms.
* To date, the UAA has neither cut salaries nor made layoffs within its nearly 500 staff members during the pandemic.
* The hope has always been to play games
with fans this season, but if that means six-foot social-distancing guidelines, Stricklin said Ben Hill Griffin Stadium might be able to accommodate close to 25,000 fans.
* Any talk about a conference-only season means angst over the Florida-Florida State rivalry game. All Stricklin could say on that is he's been in contact with FSU counterpart David Coburn and that the game was very important to both programs. "That's a good game. It's a bus ride. There's a lot of reasons to try and play that game, if at all possible."
* On a scenario that would have some Power Five leagues playing football in the fall and others not playing? "That's a tough one to answer," he said. "If there's a way that it can safely be done, my guess is everyone's going to follow that path. I'd be surprised if that was the case, but again, that's a hard one to speculate on."
Like so much else.
