Robert Caslen said during a town hall meeting recently the SEC will be monitoring Major League Baseball closely to determine the future for football in the fall.

Right now, things are still up in the air with two baseball teams having Coronavirus outbreaks prompting postponements for a few different teams within the first two weeks of play.

With SEC football scheduled to begin in late September and the university set to bring students back in mid-August, athletic director Ray Tanner said it’s disconcerting to see what’s going on with baseball.

“It is a concern. It’s a concern. Every day I wake up and get a report on our student athletes with the ones training on campus in the fall. Those percentages are very positive for us in our little bubble we’re working out of,” Tanner said on a Zoom meeting. “Major League Baseball has had its ups and downs. That’s a concern. You’d expect when students come back there’s some sort of spike. Hopefully it won’t be too bad through the university."

Now Tanner will also be one of the first to say the Gamecocks’ Coronavirus testing numbers have been very good as teams reporting back this summer with little to no cases in the sports returning to campus.

The Gamecocks currently have a few sports on campus, most notably football and both basketball teams, working out in preparation for their respective seasons.

Football is in the middle of its OTA practices before the start of preseason camp in August. Right now the start is scheduled for Aug. 7 but it could be later with the start date of the season pushed back until Sept. 26 for the 10-game schedule.

“Right now, our numbers are really good in athletics. Things have taken a good trend as far as young men and young women healthy and the testing protocols and symptom checks,” Tanner said. “We’re hopeful. There are no guarantees. We’re not immune to what we’re dealing with. It’s a constant monitoring situation. That’s our first and foremost concern as we try and play sports.”

Those testing numbers, though, have come without having a full campus of students and that will happen later this month when students arrive back in Columbia for the start of the fall semester.

Tanner estimated about 10,000 students stayed in Columbia this summer which means bringing close to 18,000 to 20,000 students back, Tanner said.

South Carolina students do have the option to not return at first and do virtual schooling and athletes who do not feel comfortable playing have the option to opt out of a season while still keeping their scholarship.

Tanner said Friday he hasn’t heard of any athlete opting out yet.

While students set to return, he said he’s not aware of any other precautions outside of typical university policies that include mask requirements in classrooms, classroom capacity limits and social distancing guidelines. Other changes can be found here.

“I don’t think there’s anything in place any more than our regular student body. The social distancing and masking are the most important things you can do,” Tanner said. “The evidence of masking and distancing have already seen positive trends in lowering the negative outputs. Hopefully that will continue.”

The NBA, WNBA and NHL all have players competing in a bubble and Coronavirus cases have been severely limited or nonexistent.

The Gamecocks and the rest of the college football world won’t have a bubble, and that means the onus will fall on players to try and limit the spread of the virus.

“Habits have to change. We’re not in a situation of normalcy,” Tanner said. “We have to emphasize masking and social distancing. That’s what our mitigation factors are right now.”