Alabama nixing student events ahead of football season due to COVID-19

Alabama football to practice while the rest of the student body quarantines

Alabama football will carry on, while the rest of the student body can’t do much for two weeks.

On Friday, the University of Alabama instituted a 14-day moratorium involving in-person student events. Alabama is the latest university to have a coronavirus outbreak once students arrived back on campus. The two other notable ones are the University of Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Despite these restrictions, the football team will still practice.

Will these two-week restrictions help give us college football this fall?

I mean, it couldn’t hurt. Alabama didn’t exactly look great when a photo from sorority bid day on Sunday surfaced at popular local establishment Gallettes. Greek life is massively important at the University of Alabama, as it is at many SEC schools. While the partying on Sunday may have led to a coronavirus outbreak on campus this week, you can’t be really surprised with college students.

To have a 14-day moratorium banning in-person social activities at a place like Alabama means the university isn’t messing around with this. The university understands they need to get coronavirus positivity rates under control to help ensure that we’ll have a college football season. If Alabama can’t play, then that’s the nail in the coffin for the SEC having a football season.

Alabama has seen first-hand what having an outstanding football program does for a university. Having a successful football program is a major way to generate revenue for the school, as well as create positive brand awareness of the university. Some of the best high school students out of state may see the Tide playing on Saturday and decided that’s the school they wish to attend.

All this does is raise the academic bar for the school. Alabama has a strong business, school law program and medical school already. Simply put, it has gotten increasingly more difficult to get into Alabama since Nick Saban became the Crimson Tide’s head football coach back in 2007. Alabama isn’t the only university to benefit greatly from having a tremendous football program.

While the Alabama students will chill out for a fortnight, the football team will still be grinding.

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