Nick Saban: Alabama Football Now Conducting Daily COVID-19 Testing

The SEC currently mandates that players be tested just twice a week heading into the 2020 college football season

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama football coach Nick Saban revealed that his players are now being tested daily for COVID-19.

Saban provided the update while speaking to the media via Zoom on Wednesday evening.

"One of the things that we've done here internally that I'll share with you is we are doing daily testing with our players," Saban said. "We just thought that it gives the players a better peace of mind. It's the best thing for the players — it's the best thing for the program. We have the capabilities and resources to do it so we're happy to do it.

"We've been testing three days a week, which we didn't have to do that, either, just like we would for our game week next week but we just decided that we would go test our guys every day and with that hopefully everybody feels safe and that it will help the fact that we won't have to be able to maybe quarantine some of these guys, minimize exposures. Everybody's got to sort of manage their personal space so that we have the most players possible available for every game but especially the first game."

The SEC previously mandated that teams must test their players at least twice weekly during game weeks, but does not have a set limit for how many times a player can be tested.

The announcement also comes after Missouri, who Alabama plays on Sept. 26 in its season opener in Colombia, announced that it will be sitting 12 players due to either contracting or having contact with someone who has been in contact with the virus.

The news was first reported by Peter Baugh of The Athletic:

Not all 12 players have tested positive, necessarily. Some might be in contact tracing. Drinkwitz declined to specify. More positives could be coming, as the team was tested again today.

All 12 are officially out for the Alabama game. https://t.co/hBF2HENass

— Peter Baugh (@Peter_Baugh) September 16, 2020

Missouri football coach Eli Drinkwitz made the announcement in his press conference earlier on Wednesday evening.

Currently it is unknown whether the Crimson Tide will be forced to sit any players for next Saturday's season opener. However, Saban said that as of right now he does not plan on making any announcements regarding players who will be sitting out next weekend's game until at least next week.

"We don't really have anybody that would be out for sure for the game," Saban said. "We may have some injured players who may not recover enough to be able to play in the game. We haven't really discussed it. I'm sure when we get into game week and we figure out exactly who can and who can't we'll kind of let you know but we don't really — I could give you a number but I don't know what 12 players Missouri has out so I don't know how that affects what we do.

"We want to certainly focus on what we need to do to play well in the game and get the players who are capable of playing and ready to play."