Jumbo Package: Wisconsin decides to shut out spring sport seniors, Tua throws for scouts

Happy Friday, everyone.

As you know, the NCAA decided to afford another year of eligibility to seniors who lost their final spring athletic seasons to the rona. Well, one school has told its seniors to move along.

One of the arguments against having senior athletes return for another season, Alvarez said, was other students won’t get a chance to finish a semester of studying abroad or be able to take part in a final musical performance that was canceled.

“Anybody that went through that, it just ended,” he said. “And so, I think our faculty reps thought that it shouldn’t be one group be cherry-picked to get credit and be able to come back to pick up that year of eligibility.”

There are also financial considerations, but everyone is dealing with those. What do you think of this justification? They aren’t wrong that a lot of other extracurriculars were affected, and those students don’t get their last chances back, but this just feels wrong somehow. Interested to hear your thoughts on it.

Tua was unable to host his planned in-person event yesterday, but he did have a virtual pro day.

Tagovailoa was set to throw in a personal pro day on April 9 that teams could attend. But due to novel coronavirus pandemic, that was canceled. The virtual pro day, which was organized by former NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer, was videotaped and will be sent to all 32 NFL franchises. Fewer than 10 people were present at the workout to follow social-distancing rules.

Tagovailoa has been training with Dilfer in Nashville. Last month, Tagovailoa shared film of a throwing session — the first since he was cleared by his doctors after suffering a dislocated hip in mid-November that ended his junior season at Alabama. The response from the videos was “overwhelmingly positive,” Tagovailoa’s agent told BamaOnLine. And Dilfer agreed.

Chris Mortensen posted several videos of it, and CB969 will along later with those.

Speaking of videos, no big deal here. Just a dude power cleaning 315 for reps.

Jedrick Wills appreciated Jalen’s leadership even after the switch.

“Jalen was a leader since Day 1,” Wills told The Rich Eisen Show this week. “I feel like he was always the guy, even after Tua went in and did what he did, ended up taking the starting job. Jalen was still a leader. He was still, day in and day out, working on his game to try and be a better quarterback. He never once changed his personality when it came to practice or game day.”

Great stuff.

Speaking of great stuff, a familiar name is working diligently on a vaccine to get us out of this mess.

Researchers at Huntsville’s Hudson Alpha Institute are working to develop a treatment and eventually a vaccine for the illness.

Dr. Richard Myers with the Hudson Alpha Institute said, “The reason I am optimistic is because we have done this before, but for flu. In some cases they are injecting blood into patients who are sick.”

Dr. Myers has 40 years of experience in genetics.

Myers says it is all about the antibodies. The cells in your body that attack the virus. If you’ve been sick from COVID-19, you have them. Scientists will take those antibodies duplicate and mass produce them.

Myers said, “One of the things that happens is if you get the disease and recover from it you are almost sure to be immune. Just like the flu we get immunity to it.”

As you may surmise, that is Roger’s brother. Rick has spent 40 years studying genetics, and his CV is pretty decent.

He attended college at the University of Alabama where he earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry. He then went to graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, earning his Ph.D.^[5] in 1982 in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Tjian. After that, Myers spent almost four years as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Tom Maniatis at Harvard University, where he studied human gene regulation. Some new technologies he developed in Maniatis’s lab exposed him to the field of human genetics, and much of his work since then has involved developing and using genomics and genetic tools to understand basic human biology and disease.

He was also a department chair at Stanford. Now, don’t you all feel less accomplished?

Last, this was very well done and the scene is football related, so why not?

Momma is played by Ariana’s mother Joan, and Vicki by an actress named Liz Gillies, with whom I am not familiar. I thought they nailed it.

That’s about it for today. Have a great weekend.

Roll Tide.