Sun Belt Conference encouraging, not mandating, COVID-19 vaccines

The Sun Belt Conference’s COVID-19 protocols in the 2020 football season clearly worked.

Of the 80 regular season conference games scheduled during the season, 79 were played. Texas State also became the first school in the FBS to finish its complete 12-game schedule.

But the same guidelines that helped the Bobcats get through the fall came back to bite them in the spring. Dozens of players were held out of practices, many of them due to false-positive tests or contact tracing procedures. Head coach Jake Spavital estimated the team had to hold 30-35 players out of the spring game on April 24 as a result.

“That's just the kind of where the times are at,” Spavital said at the time. “You know, it's unfortunate on some of these things. The COVID protocols and just where it's at are probably a little bit more severe than what we had in the season.”

Teams may find some relief from the weekly grind of testing for the disease this season — but only if they’ve received the COVID-19 vaccine.

Sun Belt commissioner Keith Gill said on Thursday at the conference’s Football Media Day in New Orleans that the league will not mandate vaccinations for its programs, but that he wanted to “encourage, in the strongest terms possible,” for schools to bank on the Sun Belt's guidelines again by getting the shot.

“COVID-19 will continue to be a challenge and I ask all of us to do our part to eliminate the threat,” Gill said. “I know that talk about masks, social distancing and other COVID-19 protocols is something that we want to put behind us. But we can't. We must remain vigilant. 

“The public health crisis created by COVID-19 is not over and the danger is real. The Delta variant is something that worries me and certainly threatens to disrupt the 2021 football season. I encourage everyone, including our student-athletes and our coaches, to get vaccinated so that we can put COVID and this health crisis in the rearview mirror soon.”

Gill said that there will be two chief differences to the COVID-19 protocols this year. The first is that players, coaches and other staff members who have not been vaccinated will still undergo regular testing throughout the year. But those who have gotten the shot will not.

The second is that the Sun Belt will no longer reschedule games and will not declare no-contests. If a team is not able to compete in a conference game on the day it was scheduled, it will forfeit the matchup — a loss that would count toward its record in the standings.

“The programs and teams that are fully vaccinated will have a competitive advantage,” Gill said.

Spavital said that, while he didn’t know the exact percentage of Texas State players who’ve been vaccinated, he’s been told that the team is in a good spot and that the number of those taking the shot is growing daily. He agreed with Gill that it’s important for everyone to get vaccinated and said he wants everyone on his team to have as much knowledge about it as they can.

“We have the vaccine available for all of our kids. And we have a lot of educational classes, a lot of doctors are coming through, a lot of dialogue within our program. Our administrators do an unbelievable job,” Spavital said. “You look at our athletic trainers on how we were, you know, really the first team to finish the season without any hiccups in our season last year, and we listen to the medical professionals as best as we can and they're gonna put our student-athletes in the best position possible.”