For the Texas A&M Aggies, not even the 12th man will be enough to overcome COVID.
As further illustration of the tenuous nature of team sports during the ongoing outbreak of the Omicron variant, a major college bowl game will have to find a new team, nine days before kickoff.
Via Ross Dellenger of SI.com, Texas A&M has informed the Gator Bowl that it won’t be able to play in the game. The Aggies simply don’t have sufficient healthy players.
The Gator Bowl will look for another team for the Jacksonville-based postseason game. Unless another bowl loses a team due to COVID, that could be hard to do.
This development comes at a time when the NFL is crossing its fingers that the final 48 regular-season games and all 13 postseason games will be played as scheduled. It felt like the league got lucky to a certain extent in 2020, given that all scheduled games were successfully played in the first year of the pandemic. It’s starting to feel like some of that same good fortune will be needed in 2021.