NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — As the debate rages on about whether or not it’s safe to play football this fall, more and more it seems like sensational headlines and questions are getting in the way of the facts we know about the coronavirus.
Make no mistake: the coronavirus is highly contagious and has potentially severe effects on people, contributing to around 143,000 reported deaths in the United States alone. But younger, healthy people who contract it largely face only mild cases, oftentimes that are entirely asymptomatic. To this point, no athlete at the college or professional level has been hospitalized due to the virus.
Yet the status of college football is up in the air after the Big Ten and Pac-12 canceled all non-conference games earlier this month. Leagues like the Ivy, Patriot, Colonial, Atlantic-10, MEAC and SWAC have since called off all of their fall sports.
The fear of the virus is as real as the virus itself. That’s why more than a handful of articles and columns have been written over the last few weeks citing the dire circumstances the sport faces to play.
“Hospitalizations, deaths projected by data analysts if FBS plays in 2020,” read one CBS Sports headline. Several other writers asked if it was responsible to play, including one that posited that the central question to the idea of college football being played is, “what is the acceptable amount of players in the hospital, on a ventilator or dying before we agree playing college football isn’t worth it?”
Questions like that may be well-meaning – no one wants anyone to die, obviously, so playing sports seems trivial against that backdrop. But is the question fair, or even accurate, in this situation?
The argument for not playing college football (or any sport) this fall starts at, “if the sport is played athletes and coaches will test positive, therefore we shouldn’t play.” But will those athletes and coaches automatically be safe if their seasons are canceled?
“That’s the issue (with the premise), the assumption is bad,” Dr. Rand McClain, founder of LCR Health, said on NewsChannel 5 Sunday Sports Central. “We expect to see positive tests. That’s the whole function of the testing, especially at the initiation of the season as we enter into the bubble or more strict protocols. That’s the function of the testing to weed out those who are already positive, so as we move forward we don’t have to worry about it as much anymore.”
Those protocols appear to be working in sports. The NHL and NBA conducted over 3,000 tests last week and had just two positive tests combined. Even the MLS, which had to send two teams home from its return to play tournament due to outbreaks, hasn’t had positive tests once teams got settled inside its Orlando bubble.
College athletic programs will never be able to create a zero-risk bubble for their student-athletes who will be forced to live with and around, as well as attend classes with other students. But most schools have had student-athletes back on campus for at least a month at this point, and it appears the numbers of positive tests are trending downward.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey recently said that since initial outbreaks of cases at schools like Alabama and LSU, the conference has seen positive tests dwindle to almost zero. The goal is to have zero positives on teams by the time the school year and season start. Then, with continual testing, you can isolate any positives that do arise to prevent a significant spread.
Asked by HBO’s Real Sports if he thinks the SEC has put student-athletes at an increased risk of infection by bringing them back to campus to train, Sankey said, “In comparison to what? To having them work out at homes – or home gyms that may have been their own hotspots, without oversight of sports medicine specialists, without strength and conditioning coaches? And that reality informed what I still believe was the right decision.”
On campus, student-athletes will have daily symptom and temperature checks, frequent testing and face mandatory isolation if exposed. If they aren’t on campus, they likely won’t face any of those safety measures while working out in facilities without the same level of supervision college athletic programs can provide.
If the season is canceled where will these student-athletes go? Will they remain on campus to attend class? Still work out at the team facility? If so, is that safer than actually competing in their sport? What if campuses close and athletes are forced off campus or back home, what protocols and measures will keep them safe there?
Cornell University researchers found that an online semester at their university could lead to nearly 6,000 more infections among students and staff than an in-person semester would due to the fact that the school would have no ability to enforce testing or safety protocols on its student body. The cornerstone of the Cornell safety plan is asymptomatic testing, just like it is for college athletic programs.
It’s easy to follow the data to a conclusion. If sports are played, student-athletes will be tested. If sports are canceled, student-athletes likely won’t get tested often, if at all, and won’t be told to quarantine like they would be on campus. Instead, they could be potential spreaders of the virus to more at-risk members of their families or the community.
Having a season to play may also provide student-athletes with structure and incentive that may curb some of the risky behaviors common among college students that have been seen to lead to the spread of the disease. And if they were to become sick on campus, they would have access to world-class medical staffs and, in the unlikely event it’s needed, hospitals.
The coronavirus isn’t going away, and stopping it isn’t as simple as just shutting things down. Nor is that option void of disastrous economic and social ramifications. It is true that college football isn’t worth playing if players are dying. But the risk of death for people under the age of 24 is estimated at around .01%.
So the true question central to whether or not football should be played this fall is this. Will student-athletes face a greater risk by playing their sports than if seasons are canceled and they are left to up to their own devices to study, train and socialize?
The data points to a need for students to be on campus and for sports to resume. The risk remains small and the rewards of playing and bringing a degree of normalcy back to student-athletes and the country are great.
