Whipped Cream Difficulties

Doesn’t count as a firing, but still kind of interesting. Lawrence tipped me off to this earlier today, but it was just a rumor at the time: now it seems to be confirmed.

Texas A&M is out of the Gator Bowl.

Is it the Wuhan Flu? Sort of.

News broke on Tuesday that A&M’s football team had not practiced since last Saturday as a number of athletes had tested positive prior to the Aggies hitting the practice field on Sunday and then again during the next two days.

But they’ve also got “as many as ten upperclassmen” who are eligible for the draft and have said they don’t want to play. They’ve got two more players in the transfer portal, and “as many as 12 players” who are out because of injuries.

Those items push the Aggies down towards approximately 60 scholarship players being available for the game including just one quarterback in Haynes King (who missed most of the season himself due to a broken ankle and has just returned to workouts).

ESPN:

Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork told ESPN that the program was down to 38 scholarship position players, of which 20 were offensive and defensive linemen.
In addition to the outbreak and the injuries, Texas A&M also had tight end Jalen Wydermyer and running back Isaiah Spiller declare for the NFL draft. Quarterback Zach Calzada, who started 10 games this season, entered the transfer portal.
“So if you take running backs, receivers, quarterbacks and defensive backs, we had 13 of those guys and only 13 scholarship players on defense,” Bjork told ESPN. “We had over 40 guys out between COVID, season-ending injuries, transfers and opt-outs.

The Gator Bowl people, the NCAA, Wake Forest (the other team) and the ACC are all supposedly working to find another team to play. At this date, though, it seems to me like a long shot: the game is scheduled for December 31st. I imagine many teams have already released their players to go home (Texas A&M was supposed to release theirs Tuesday, and have them come back after Christmas) and I doubt a lot of teams that aren’t already scheduled for bowls are going to want to scramble and take risks just to compete in a lower tier bowl game.

On a completely related note:

A new College Football Playoff policy written this week in response to the surging omicron variant allows for a team to advance to the national championship — and ultimately win it — by its opponents having to forfeit, according to an updated set of COVID-19 policies the CFP released on Wednesday.

The national championship game could be pushed to January 14th (it is scheduled for January 10th) but:

If one team is able to play in the title game and the other can’t because of COVID-19 — and the game can’t be rescheduled — the team that can’t play will forfeit and its opponent will be declared the national champion. If both teams can’t play on either the original or rescheduled date, the game will be declared a “no contest” and the CFP National Championship will be vacated for this season.

…

If both teams are unavailable to play in a semifinal game, it would be declared a no contest and the winner of the other semifinal game would be declared the CFP national champion.

Not that I am hoping for anyone to come down with the Chinese Rabies, but man, a national championship by forfeit would be a sight to see.