{"id":85240,"date":"2020-03-11T21:37:23","date_gmt":"2020-03-12T02:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=85240"},"modified":"2020-03-11T21:37:31","modified_gmt":"2020-03-12T02:37:31","slug":"southeastern-conference-restricts-audiences-at-all-sec-events-through-march-30-due-to-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/southeastern-conference-restricts-audiences-at-all-sec-events-through-march-30-due-to-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Southeastern Conference Restricts Audiences at all SEC Events Through March 30 Due to COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Ole Miss Baseball games will be affected.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The <strong>Southeastern Conference<\/strong> has announced it will conduct the <strong>2020 SEC Men&#8217;s Basketball Tournament<\/strong> with only essential staff, limited family and credentialed media in attendance at <strong>Bridgestone Arena<\/strong> in <strong>Nashville <\/strong>for the remainder of the week beginning on Thursday following the recommendation of the <strong>NCAA COVID-19 Advisory Panel<\/strong> related to conducting sporting events closed to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition, the SEC announced that all regular season contests in all sports on SEC campuses and SEC Championship events will be conducted with similar attendance restrictions effective <strong>Thursday, March 12<\/strong> through at least <strong>March 30<\/strong> at which time the conference and its member universities will re-evaluate conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The SEC issued a statement from<strong> SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;In light of recent developments beyond our control related to the spread of the coronavirus, including a recommendation from the NCAA COVID-19 Advisory Panel, and after consultation with our member universities, we have made the difficult decision to hold the 2020 SEC Men&#8217;s Basketball Tournament in Nashville without spectators beginning with games of Thursday, March 12. Effective immediately, the policy will also apply to other SEC Championship events and on-campus regular season games scheduled through at least the end of March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;After conferring with local and national health authorities, we remain confident in our ability to safeguard the health and well-being of our student-athletes, coaches and other staff who will be participating as well as the limited number of family members and media who will be in attendance at the tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We regret the inconvenience and disappointment this decision has caused our fans, especially those who have already traveled to Nashville for the tournament.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As previously announced, the SEC has implemented the following enhanced health measures for the 2020 SEC Men&#8217;s Basketball Tournament:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Use of hospital grade disinfectant to sanitize locker rooms before teams arrive and immediately upon departure;<\/li><li>Sanitization of game balls with hospital grade disinfectant after each practice and game;<\/li><li>Sanitization of team benches plus band and cheerleader seating areas following each game;<\/li><li>Hand sanitizers, disinfectant wipes and Lysol spray in team locker rooms;<\/li><li>Hand sanitizers at scorer&#8217;s table, in officials&#8217; locker rooms, operations offices and media areas.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>For the SEC Men&#8217;s Basketball Tournament, automatic refunds of ticket purchases will be made to fans who are the original purchaser of the tickets from <strong>SEC Office<\/strong> or an <strong>SEC university<\/strong>, or a verified purchaser on the <strong>SEC Ticket Exchange<\/strong> powered by <strong>Ticketmaster<\/strong>. For regular season events, each campus will determine refund policies and procedures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The SEC Network will televise the entire first and second round of the tournament and the quarterfinals evening session. <strong>ESPN <\/strong>will broadcast the afternoon session of the quarterfinals, both semifinal matchups and the championship game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The SEC remains in continued communication with public health officials and reminds everyone to be attentive to everyday preventive actions identified by the <strong>Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/strong> (<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">www.cdc.gov<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"25\" height=\"16\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/TheLocalVoiceLigature-25web.jpg?resize=25%2C16\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-14544\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ole Miss Baseball games will be affected. The Southeastern Conference has announced it will conduct the 2020 SEC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":238,"featured_media":85241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[88,89,16051,16052,7067,4880],"class_list":["post-85240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-baseball","tag-basketball","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-ole-miss","tag-southeastern-conference"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/2020-03-11-SEC-Coronavirus.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}