SEC athletes won’t lose their scholarships if they don’t play during the coronavirus pandemic.
The conference announced the following about the decision to let athletes sit out and keep their scholarships:
Southeastern Conference student-athletes who elect to not participate in intercollegiate athletics during the fall 2020 academic semester because of health and/or safety concerns related to COVID-19 will continue to have their scholarships honored by their university and will remain in good standing with their team, the Conference announced Friday.
This is the correct decision, and I expect every conference to make the same decision. You simply can’t yank scholarships during the pandemic. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
If a college football program pulled scholarships or forced young men to play, it’d be an absolute PR disaster from the start.
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Now, if a player who didn’t want to play ended up getting sick, then all hell would break loose. It’d be a PR disaster that you couldn’t imagine.
So you have to give players the option to sit out and keep their scholarship during the coronavirus pandemic.
Do I think a lot of players will sit out? No, I expect most of them to play if football happens in the fall. They want to grind it out, but they should be given the option not to without losing their spot.
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We’re in a wild time, and that means we’re going to have to kind of experiment as we go. This is the right call from the SEC.