Georgia‘s football game at Missouri on Saturday has been postponed because of a combination of positive tests, contact tracing and subsequent quarantining of individuals within the Missouri program, the SEC announced Wednesday morning.
This is now the fourth SEC game in three days that has been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Because Missouri has a game tentatively scheduled for Dec.12, the opportunity to reschedule the Georgia at Missouri game “will need to be evaluated,” according to the news release. The rescheduling of games on the remaining SEC football schedule may include Dec. 19 as a playing date.
A Missouri school spokesperson told ESPN there is not an outbreak; rather, the football program had one positive test Sunday that led to the subsequent contact tracing of individuals within a specific position group, causing it to fall below the number of players needed at that position.
All 14 SEC athletic directors Tuesday agreed the conference should use Dec. 19 as a makeup date for any teams that have had games postponed and aren’t playing in the SEC title game that day, Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek told ESPN. The SEC’s presidents and chancellors are expected to review the recommendation on Thursday at their previously scheduled meeting.
It’s been a tumultuous week of COVID-19-related disruptions for the SEC, which also this week announced changes for three other games originally scheduled for Saturday. On Tuesday, the SEC postponed Alabama-LSU and Texas A&M-Tennessee. On Monday, the league announced its decision to postpone the Auburn-Mississippi State game.
“We knew that the potential — in fact, the likelihood — of disruption was real and we built in some opportunities to manage that,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told ESPN on Monday. “As we go later in the season, those opportunities are minimized.
“We’re going to keep moving forward. We don’t get to just throw up our hands and not stop trying, but we’ll have to come together depending on how much disruption occurs and we’ll have to react to it. It’s hard to predict. It’s one of the lessons from the last few months.”
Auburn on Tuesday paused practices after the Tigers had 12 positive COVID-19 tests within the program, coach Gus Malzahn said. Texas A&M said it has three active COVID-19 cases, including two people who traveled with the team to South Carolina last week. LSU coach Ed Orgeron said Monday that multiple players, including starters, would have been unavailable for Saturday’s game. Some have tested positive, while the majority are out as a result of contact tracing.
The SEC did not immediately provide any more details on the scope of positive cases or contact tracing at Missouri.
