UK President Eli Capilouto: ‘We’ve got to live in a COVID world’
Eli Capilouto is not just the president of the University of Kentucky, he’s also serving as president of the SEC.
And during the time of this coronavirus pandemic, it should be noted that Capilouto previously served as the dean of UAB’s School of Public Health and has a doctorate in health policy and management from Harvard.
With that in mind, John Talty of AL.com interviewed Capilouto about how member schools are handling the virus and the big question of whether there will be SEC football in the fall.
Three takeaways:
1. Capilouto says we have to live in a COVID world
“As I heard someone recently say, we have two choices: we can go into lockdown, shutdown, or we can try to live in a COVID world. I think most of us realize we’ve got to live in a COVID world. So how do we make it as safe as possible for our student-athletes and for those who are dearest in our community — students, staff and faculty? That’s what we’re trying to do.”
2. Capilouto admits he is alarmed by some of the recent numbers
The UK president says that if you look across the states in the SEC, the recent spike in coronavirus cases is a reason for concern. He said sports has to play a role in flattening the curve.
“It reminds me of a glass of water where someone’s turned the hydrant on, and it’s overflowing. You have to turn the water off on these cases.”
3. No surprise about the biggest sports question he gets
But the UK president says he is more concerned about how schools welcome back students and educate those students. He says it will be a mixture of in-class traditional learning as well as in-class hybrid and some classes fully online. And doing it all safely.
“Can we do all these things on our respective campuses with all these groups we phased in and now athletes that come back earlier than students, can we learn from these rolling restarts enough to make sure when we open up our campus we’re going to have success? We’re going to have cases, and we’re preparing for those right now.”
Be sure and read the entire interview at AL.com.
This story was originally published July 21, 2020 at 5:48 PM.
