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The Southeastern Conference will now allow virtual meetings between coaches and players in order to continue Spring training.
The conference announced that these virtual meetings will be good to start as soon as Monday.
At first, the SEC had decided to cancel all sporting events and activities until April 15th. A decision was supposed to be made after this date of whether or not these activities would resume.
Now, these new instructions include two hours of virtual meetings per week, including film review. With the coronavirus still spreading, many student-athletes followed University instructions of going home during the pandemic.
The SEC will allow virtual meetings and instruction starting Monday.
Full rules and regulationshttps://t.co/VbhyIv63KW
— Bulldog Maven on SI (@BulldogsSI) March 28, 2020
These new guidelines allow the coaches to stay engaged with the players that left campus. However, physical workouts will not be watched or reviewed by the coaches. Chalk talks and film reviews are the only things that will be permitted in these virtual discussions.
Trainers are able to provide strength and conditioning drills to their players but are prohibited from watching the athlete complete the drill.
You can read the full rules and regulations of these new guidelines here.
The SEC also announced that more updates on the offseason and summer activities will come in the next few weeks.
Other Conferences
The SEC is not the only conference that has taken this measure. The Big 12 conference announced on Sunday that they will also be allowing virtual meetings starting on Monday.
Big 12 to allow virtual meetings for players, coaches. https://t.co/GrjYoampIM
— CollegeAD (@collegead) March 30, 2020
The decision came after Oklahoma football head coach Lincoln Riley was critical of the current situation. In a radio interview, he stated that not all of his student-athletes have the opportunity to keep training back home.
“And so a lot of our guys — not a lot, but I would say, you’re probably talking about 20-30 percent of our guys, at least — don’t have anything to train with.”
Big 12 announced this a few hours after they had released a different statement saying that these virtual meetings were not going to be possible. They had also announced that they would extend their athletics shut-down to May 31st.
A program that has been taking advantage of technology is the ACC. They have been conducting their meetings via Zoom.
