As each day passes college football fans remain on pins and needles as to whether the national championship game between Alabama and Ohio State will be pushed back or not.
On Tuesday it was reported by AL.com that the Buckeyes had been experiencing COVID-19 struggles within its program which may impact its player availability for the title game on Jan. 11. Although nothing has changed at the moment, every team knows from this season that anything to do with COVID is a day to day process.
During his Thursday press conference, Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban confirmed the discussion had between conferences and expanded on the challenges that may occur if the game were to be pushed back a week.
“Well look, I think everybody respects the disruptions that we’ve had to endure throughout the season,” Saban said to reporters on a Zoom call. “We have total respect for the safety of players. If there were — and I think there were some issues relative to COVID, and there were discussions as to whether it was fair to continue or to move the game back and all that.”
Saban also highlighted the health of his own team being at risk due to the fact it would need to endure another week of practice on top of the potential exposure to the rest of the student body.
“I think there would have been some probably, I don’t know, difficult management issues if we would have moved the game back. Our school is starting this next week. We would have had 35,000 students coming back here. We’ve played 12 games this year, so we have a lot of guys that have ground through the season, a lot of guys that are nicked up a little bit.
“Another week of practice would have been much more difficult for those guys probably. January 18th is a day people got to decide whether they’re going to go out for the draft or not.
“So just the whole timing of the whole thing would have been a tough management. But I would have put player safety on either team as the most important factor in this decision.”
As of now, the game is still scheduled to be played on Monday, Jan. 11.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
