Texas Football: Laura Rutledge claims players ‘worried’ about COVID-19 spread

The “growing concerns” surrounding the novel coronavirus pandemic is already having its major impact on the Texas football program.

An ongoing storyline in the midst of the summer months of the 2020 offseason, largely impacting the Texas football program, is the novel coronavirus pandemic and how it will alter the looming 2020 season. The Longhorns already had more than a dozen of their football players test positive for COVID-19 since summer workouts ramped up earlier this month.

And the Longhorns aren’t the only major college football program that had a large number of players reported to test positive for COVID-19 sometime this month. The Clemson Tigers, LSU Tigers, and Kansas State Wildcats were just a few of the programs hit the hardest by the raw number of positive tests since the COVID-19 pandemic struck in the midst of the 2020 offseason.

ESPN college football commentator/reporter Laura Rutledge sat in the midst of all the headlines surrounding the pandemic since the 2020 offseason really ramped up. And she had another report earlier this week that gave good insight into how some players and staff might be feeling during the 2020 offseason as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread around the globe.

Rutledge joined up with ESPN’s morning show “Get Up” on June 22 to share what she heard from various sources around the country in the midst of the pandemic. Here’s some of what she had to say on the matter (monologue thanks to 247Sports).

"“I’m hearing there are many more cases we don’t know about. That’s to be expected, but I think this is more widespread and a larger volume of cases than people realize in college football,” Rutledge said. “I’m getting a sense of concern from players that wasn’t there just a couple weeks ago. There’s actually some players who are trying to figure out how they could write a letter to the NCAA expressing their concerns. But here’s the problem— they want to remain anonymous because they’re concerned that all of the sudden maybe a university would say, ‘Hey, if you’re that worried about this, just quarantine and don’t play.’“It’s a double-edged sword that while they’re worried about their health, they still really want to play football and want to be given a fair chance to compete. This will continue to be very complicated and I think you’ll see a lot more schools have to enforce quarantine. And still, all of the (athletic directors) and coaches I’ve spoken to are planning on starting college football on time.”"

There is a spread going on around the country, with an uptick in a few states particularly. Texas governor Greg Abbott recently gave a press conference stating that the growing number of positive COVID-19 cases around the state is “unacceptable”.

Since the state of Texas appears to be one of those harder hit by the pandemic right now, the Longhorns are sitting right in the center of this storyline. And since roughly 20 percent of the Longhorns players already tested positive for COVID-19, it is a thought that is constantly lingering around at the moment.

Texas is supposed to open up their 2020 regular season slate on Sep. 5 at home at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium against the South Florida Bulls. But the COVID-19 pandemic is sure to alter the 2020 college football season in some regard.