The messaging has been clear: Masks = sports in fall 2020. Greg Byrne wonders why college students can't understand that straightforward statement.
Byrne is Alabama's athletic director, and when he saw images of maskless people standing close together on campus Sunday, he felt compelled to scold them.
Who wants college sports this fall?? 🏈⚽️🏐🏃🏼♀️🏃🏿
— Greg Byrne (@Greg_Byrne) August 16, 2020
Obviously not these people!! 🤦🏼♂️
We’ve got to do better than this for each other and our campus community. Please wear your masks!😷 pic.twitter.com/OAFocYZwin
Clearly, these folks didn't remember when Crimson Tide football coach Nick Saban took mascot Big Al to task last spring for not donning a mask.
MORE: College football cancellations, explained
Byrne sent his tweet a day after the NCAA's chief medical officer, Dr. Brian Hainline, told CNN (via Stewart Mandel of The Athletic) that the fall season cannot be played if COVID-19 testing in the U.S. "stays the way it is."
Alabama is on track to play in the fall as the SEC, the ACC and Big 12 push forward during the COVID-19 pandemic. The SEC, in fact, will announce its conference-only 2020 football schedule Monday night. The season is set to begin Sept. 26. The conference previously announced the opponents for each school in its revised 10-game slate.
The Big Ten and Pac-12 postponed fall sports last week; the conferences hope to stage them in the spring semester. One of the reasons was cases of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart that is considered an effect of the COVID-19 respiratory virus.
Byrne told AL.com last week that Alabama had not detected any cases of myocarditis in its cardiac screenings of players.
"Can I tell you unequivocally it won't happen? No. But that would be disingenuous but as of right now, that's where we are with it but it's something we are monitoring closely," he was quoted as saying.
Saban told ESPN last week that players will be safer on campus under team supervision than at home, but he also acknowledged that having students on campus could create "challenges" to containing the virus.
