Immediately after Florida football coach Dan Mullen said he wanted 90,000 fans at his team’s home games, his team was shut down by an enormous coronavirus outbreak. Enough players have tested positive that the team’s games have been postponed through Oct. 31, and Mullen himself tested positive for the virus on Saturday. No monkey paw required: Massive viral outbreaks can happen when you treat the pandemic as flippantly as Mullen did.
After an Oct. 10 loss at Texas A&M, with Aggie fans strategically packed together for maximum noise, Mullen begged his administration to go along with Gov. Ron DeSantis and allow a completely full stadium. “I know our governor passed that rule so certainly, hopefully the UF administration decides to let us pack the Swamp against LSU,” Mullen said last weekend, referring to the fact that the state of Florida has lifted all coronavirus-related restrictions. “Because that crowd was certainly a factor in the game… The governor has passed a rule that we’re allowed to pack the Swamp and have 90,000 in the Swamp to give us the home-field advantage Texas A&M had today.”
That was Saturday; by Tuesday, the Florida football program had so many positive covid tests that it shut down entirely. As of Saturday, the program said it had 21 players and coaches test positive, and plenty more isolating because of contact with the positive cases. That postponed Saturday’s scheduled game against LSU until December; the Oct. 24 Florida-Missouri game was also pushed back a week.
The SEC’s conference-only non-bubble is straining. After two weeks of minimal interruptions, the two Florida games and Saturday’s Missouri-Vanderbilt game were postponed. (Vanderbilt has an outbreak of its own.) Alabama coach Nick Saban tested positive for the virus earlier this week.
Even as Mullen raved about Texas A&M’s competitive advantage, his own athletic director admitted that “there’s suspicion the trip to College Station was probably at the root of the outbreak.”
As for Mullen, his own encounter with the virus has at least required him to pay lip service to it for the first time. “I’m continuing to self-isolate from my family, who all remain healthy, and am following all the guidelines set forth by UF Health, the CDC, and our public health officials,” he said in announcing his positive test.
