Injuries, COVID-19 issues hammer roster of South Carolina’s first opponent
The threat of COVID-19 impacting college football games is going to loom for the entirety of South Carolina’s 2020 season.
The opener is still three weeks away, but the Gamecocks’ first opponent, Tennessee, is having a difficult time with the virus.
Volunteers coach Jeremy Pruitt told reporters on Saturday his team couldn’t scrimmage as scheduled after 44 players were sidelined, seven or eight by the virus, a few by injuries and many more by COVID contact tracing. He said the team only had 30 available offensive players.
The Gamecocks are set to face Tennessee at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26 in Williams-Brice Stadium — Saturday should have been SEC teams’ first games on the original 2020 schedules. The Volunteers won last season’s meeting in Knoxville, snapping a three-game winning streak in the series for the Gamecocks.
South Carolina has plenty of connections to the UT program and Pruitt’s staff, as both draw heavily from Nick Saban’s program at Alabama. USC coach Will Muschamp hired two staffers from the Vols this offseason in director or player personnel Drew Hughes and defensive line coach Tracy Rocker.
College football teams generally have more than 100 players on the roster, with up to 85 on scholarship.
Muschamp has said repeatedly though the preseason that he wants almost everyone on the roster ready to go in case a COVID-19 outbreak knocks out a group of players. He guessed a team could play with as few as 53 players available, like an NFL team.
The Gamecocks had four positives out of around 350 tests in their last round of testing, Muschamp said, but he did not specify if players or staffers were positive. He also didn’t mention how many the contact tracing would affect. The team was set to scrimmage Saturday night.
On Friday, the Big 12 said teams would not be allowed to play with fewer than 53 players, which included at least seven offensive linemen, four interior defensive linemen and one quarterback.
This story was originally published September 5, 2020 at 3:24 PM with the headline "Injuries, COVID-19 issues hammer roster of South Carolina’s first opponent."
