HOOVER, Ala. — The giant screen erected in the main room of SEC media days normally shows the league’s messaging. It flashes the day’s schedule, clips of championship-winning highlights and the name of the next speaker on the dais.
Throughout this week, it has intermittently projected another kind of message.
“THE SEC BACKS THE VAX,” it reads.
Welcome to the newfound plight of the SEC and all of college football—convincing athletes, coaches, administrators and now, the community to get vaccinated. As the COVID-19 delta variant creeps across the country and the 2021 season inches closer, college football officials have sprung into this frantic mission.