Tommy Tuberville on college football amid pandemic: We have to move forward, protection is key
The Power 5 conferences are split over playing college football amid the coronavirus pandemic; Former Auburn University football coach, Tommy Tuberville, reacts on ‘The Daily Briefing.’
College football should be played this fall despite the coronavirus pandemic because America has "got to get back to normal life," former college football coach and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tommy Tuberville told "The Daily Briefing" Wednesday.
"We put men on the moon. We have to put our kids in a school -- keep them protected, be socially responsible -- but we need to get back to school and get back to normal life," Tuberville told host Dana Perino. "Our kids are the ones that will be affected if we don’t get back to playing football and sports and learning from each other."
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Tuberville -- the former head coach at Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech and Cincinnati -- revealed that he knows people who are or were in the ICU due to the virus, and has also lost a friend to the pandemic. However, he claimed, for each sick individual, 33 more are being affected economically, socially, mentally or emotionally.
He added that even during the pandemic, student-athletes have continued to train at home for the fall season.
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"There’s nobody more protected than college athletes and high school athletes," Tuberville said. "They have doctors, they have ways to wash their clothes that get them disinfected. We had to fight the flu, we had to fight staph infection. They’ll be there forever. We have to fight back against this virus. If it hits us hard, we've got to take a step forward and we can’t keep moving backwards.
"What if this is with us three years from now? We have to try to move this country forward," he went on. "What better way [than to] go back to school [and] protect our kids?"
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Tuberville acknowledged that students should be given the ability to opt out of sports if they are concerned for their safety, but insisted that preemptively cancelling games isn't the right path.
"We have to get back to a normal life, but protection is the number one key. People are going to get infected. We can’t back up from it. Take them out like we did when I coached."