Alabama is still planning on football this fall. University of Alabama President Stuart R. Bell expressed optimism toward both the upcoming football season as well as the return of 38,000 students to campus this fall despite the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“As we look forward to accomplishing another great fall semester welcoming back students and welcoming back our sports teams to be able to have competition,” Bell told television station CBS 42 on Thursday. “Those are our plans and it’s a high bar and anticipates that we will be able to meet that… certainly our plan is that we will have a football season and fans will be a part of it in our stadium. So we are working on that and our first games are in September. So we have time and we also know we have work to do.”
Alabama’s fall classes are set to begin on August 19. This week, the university announced it is “planning for and will continue to work toward in-person instruction this fall on its regular schedule.” Alabama is also reviewing the possibility of returning to in-person classes for the second summer term. A decision on summer 2 courses will be announced before the end of May.
The SEC has suspended all in-person athletic activities through May 31. However, teams are allowed up to eight hours of video conferencing per week to meet with players and break down film.
Last week, Alabama head coach Nick Saban also expressed optimism toward to the return of college football in the near future.
"I’m hopeful that sometime this summer that the players can come back here and be around the players and get back to school,” he said. “We’re doing as much research as we can, whether it’s talking to Abbott (Laboratories) about what kind of testing programs we can implement here for the safety of players and our students.
"But I don’t think anybody knows what is college football gonna look like. What is any football gonna look like? Are we gonna have seats in-between fans? Are we gonna come up with a solution that allows people to go to games? Are we gonna have to test people to get into stadiums? Are we gonna have to play games with nobody? Or are we even gonna be able to play games at all?
“I’m hopeful — we got so many great people in this country who sort of do research and development, and solve problems. I kind of feel confident that somebody will come up with some solution that will get us back to normal sometime here soon.”
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Andrew Bone, of BamaInsider.com, is a real estate broker in the state of Alabama.
