Nick Saban on Alabama's COVID-19 protocols, vaccination rate

As COVID-19 positive case numbers have significantly risen as of late, that has impacted the sports world – just like the coronavirus did all throughout 2020. While there has been multiple college football postseason bowl games cancelled, nearly every team that’s still playing is doing all it can to prevent that from happening to them.

Of those teams is Alabama, which is currently in Dallas, Texas ahead of its matchup with Cincinnati in the College Football Playoff’s Cotton Bowl semifinal on New Year’s Eve at AT&T Stadium. After arriving in Dallas on Sunday, Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban met with the media and discussed COVID-19 and how his program is handling it.

“I mean, we implemented the masks, the social distancing in meetings with players way back when we started,” Saban said. “So we’re already doing all the protocols that we feel we possibly can. Our team’s all been vaccinated, 92% of our players have also had boosters. But we have encouraged them to use the same practices that we had to use a year ago – whether it’s wearing a mask in meetings, wearing a mask when you’re not in the building, social distancing when we’re in meetings. So if there were some new protocols that would help us be safer, we would certainly implement them, but I think we tried to implement all that we know that has worked in the past.”

The College Football Playoff has announced that any team that isn’t able to play due to COVID-19 related issues will have to forfeit and there will be no postponements, so Alabama is certainly taking every preventative measure it can.

The Crimson Tide – who are ranked No. 1 in the nation – and No. 4 Cincinnati are scheduled to kickoff at 3:30 p.m. ET on Friday at AT&T Stadium on ESPN. Alabama comes in as a 13.5-point favorite, with the over/under set at 58 total points.

COVID-19 forces bowl game cancellations

The Fenway Bowl between Virginia and SMU and Military Bowl featuring East Carolina and Boston College have both been cancelled due to COVID-19 related issues.

While Virginia and SMU won’t be able to face off in Boston and East Carolina and Boston College won’t be playing in Annapolis, the four join Texas A&M as teams that won’t be able to compete this postseason due to COVID-19.

Although the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl is still happening on New Year’s Eve in Jacksonville, it won’t feature the originally scheduled teams of Texas A&M and Wake Forest but instead Wake Forest and Rutgers as the Aggies had to withdraw due to COVID-19 related issues within their program.