No. 1 Alabama at LSU and No. 5 Texas A&M at Tennessee will not be played Saturday because of COVID-19 issues, raising the number of Southeastern Conference games postponed this week to three.
The SEC said Tuesday that the Aggies and Volunteers will be rescheduled for Dec. 12, but the Crimson Tide’s game against the defending national champion Tigers is in danger of not being played at all after COVID-19 cases in LSU’s program.
Both teams are coming off their open dates and LSU already has a game against No. 6 Florida scheduled for Dec. 12 that had to be postponed last month. The SEC said it would consider using Dec. 19, the day of the conference championship game in Atlanta, to make up regular-season games not involving teams playing for the title.
Texas A&M said it has three active COVID-19 cases, including two people who traveled with the team to South Carolina last week.
On Monday, No. 24 Auburn’s game at Mississippi State was postponed because of COVID-19 positive tests and contact tracing within the Bulldogs’ program.
In the American Athletic Conference, Navy’s game at Memphis on Saturday was postponed because of positive COVID-19 tests at the Naval Academy.
Alabama-LSU is typically one of the most anticipated games of the college football season. Last year, the Tigers broke a long losing streak in the series and won a thriller in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that propelled them to an SEC championship and national title.
This year’s game was scheduled to kick off at 6 p.m. EST and be broadcast by CBS, following the network’s coverage of the Masters golf major. The pandemic forced the Masters to be postponed from April.
It’s the second week in a row that Navy had a game postponed because of positive tests at the Academy and the subsequent quarantine of student-athletes. The Midshipmen were scheduled to host Tulsa last weekend before that game was called off.
Navy has not been on the field since Nov. 2 and has not had a regular practice since Oct. 29.
The American has not announced potential makeup dates for Saturday’s game or the Tulsa-Navy game. Memphis and Navy do not share a common open date through the rest of the season.
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AP Sports Writer David Ginsburg in Baltimore contributed to this report.
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