Southeastern Conference athletic directors and personnel convened in Birmingham, Alabama on Monday to assess the possibility of playing scheduled college football games this fall.

The meeting came after the Big Ten and Pac-12 officially announced a conference-only slate for upcoming fall sports. This announcement followed spikes in COVID-19 cases across much of the country in the last few weeks.

The SEC meeting resulted in a rather bleak outlook by many that this football season will resemble anything fans are accustomed to. Conference commissioner Greg Sankey’s official statement following the summit carries implications for Clemson and the rest of the college football world.

“It is clear that current circumstances related to COVID-19 must improve and we will continue to closely monitor developments around the virus on a daily basis,” Sankey said in a statement released by the SEC on Monday afternoon.

ACC officials also took action on Monday by postponing its annual ACC Football Kickoff event originally scheduled virtually for July 21-23.

Coronavirus numbers in South Carolina and the country have increased substantially in the last several weeks. But hospitalization and death rates have decreased proportionally compared to the onset of the global pandemic in March and April.

Since June 1, Clemson student-athletes and staff have undergone 722 COVID-19 tests with 47 student-athletes and six staff testing positive for a 7.3-percent positive rate. To date, there have been no hospitalizations related to COVID-19 for any individual within Clemson Athletics, and more than half of the positive cases have been asymptomatic.

The ACC has yet to release an official statement on football in the fall or hold a similar type of summit with its athletic directors. But the precedent set by other conferences in the Power Five will likely produce swifter action from the conference in the coming days.

Sankey also gave an update on when to expect more updates from the SEC and said to expect an official decision sometime in late July as conference leaders continue to meet via teleconference on a regular basis.

Regardless of what steps conference officials take in the coming days, a normal football season now seems like wishful thinking.

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