An interesting question the remaining Power 5 conferences likely will face in the coming week(s) is will you continue with football if classes are 100% remote. If its not safe to have kids on campus is it safe to have football teams on campus playing football (an activity that is incompatible with social distancing and won’t involve wearing masks). At one point in the summer, the consensus seemed to be no; if no non-athlete students on campus, no football. Now that they are facing that reality rather than hypothetical, is the view still the same?
You’re right that my analysis depends on the proposition that collegiate football players are more likely to get covid than those same athletes would be, if they weren’t playing football.
At first I thought this was obvious: football players are not wearing masks or social distancing when they’re playing and training and they’re living in groups. Both of those are more dangerous than not doing them, as far as covid is concerned.
But then I thought, some of those football teams had a pretty high positivity when the athletes arrived on campus. So the football players must have a big risk of covid even when they’re not training at school.
I’d say that if a team is not vigilant about surveillance, then they’re at high risk of an outbreak, because one infected person would easily spread the disease to his teammates. But if they are vigilant, maybe the risk is no bigger than it would be without football. Maybe. I’m skeptical.
Whether or not classes are 100% remote, in my opinion, will have no bearing on whether or not certain Power 5 Conferences continue playing football. Only infections among players & coaches will result in an end to football for those Power 5 Conferences which have decided to play football this Fall.
An empty campus–100% remote learning–may make playing football less risky for the team members, therefore, 100% remote classes could have the opposite effect of that suggested above in another post.
Yes I agree it comes down to vigilance (for everyone, not just the football players - very disturbing to hear that several schools are experiencing poor student conduct immediately after arriving. This will shut these schools down for in person anything if it continues).
However I still don’t see the leap of myocarditis risk for football players exceeding that for anyone else. Step 1, get covid. Step 2, potentially becomes myocarditis (which is why they would be screened).
It’s a subset of covid patients, not of football players. I would assume anyone with covid (in that age group and with decent health) has the same chance of it turning into myocarditis. The football player actually has two advantages -likely much better physical health and heart strength, and they’ll get screened for cardiac issues if they have covid. The everyday citizen will not even know they have an issue unless they present cardiac symptoms that require testing. The football player presenting myocarditis will be shut down and no longer participating, working out, etc. The general citizen will be doing all their normal things, including (for some) regular exercise that could become quite dangerous if myocarditis is undetected.
I assume your premise is that the football component is simply the accelerator of contracting covid in the first place. That may be (or not based on vigilance). Once they have it, they are no more or less likely to be at myocarditis risk than anyone else with covid.
Had colleges said in July/early August, we are going 100% remote with classes because we want to increase the chance of playing a full football season, how well do you think that would have gone over?
Some quotes from conference heads/athletic directors over summer:
Maybe that is at least part of reason why so many schools in big time/money football conferences wanted to have kids back on campus?
I think that choice was left up to the team. I know the CU athletic director announced in May that if students weren’t on campus, there would be no football. The PAC 12 may have also said that. Other schools/conferences can make other choices.
Now the situation is reversed. There ARE students on campus at CU but no football. The team is there (as they are students) and the season has been delayed until the spring so they still have ‘off season’ workouts and meetings.
Exactly. And I don’t accept the idea that a football player, by virtue of being healthy and active, is protected against either being infected with covid-19 in the first place, or getting myocarditis if he does get covid. We have seen no reason to believe either of those.
The German study saw a 60% chance of getting myocarditis among their participants who had covid. I’m confident the rate is much less than 60% for younger people, much much less. But, importantly, in the German study, people were just as likely to get myocarditis if they had mild or no symptoms as if they had severe symptoms. That, I think, is probably true for younger people as well. So I think a football player is just as likely to get the myocarditis complication if infected as another college student is.
The other issue is, myocarditis is worse for an elite football player than the average college student, for two reasons. First, the elite football player could drop dead on the field, if they got myocarditis and it wasn’t detected.
Second, the elite football player values his elite physical ability more than the average person values their average ability. The elite football player is potentially sacrificing his entire athletic career. The average college student never had an elite athletic career to sacrifice, and they probably weren’t going to practice strenuous sports much if at all for the rest of their life, because most people don’t.
If the school can control covid on the football team with frequent testing and strict enforcement of the rules, why can’t they do that for all the students? I just can’t understand the idea of privileging football over academics. Why doesn’t the chemistry student who needs labs for her classes get the same consideration as the quarterback?
Don’t Power 5 Conferences typically–not always–house football players together ?
Power 5 Conference football players are subject to curfews and other restrictions which allows for easier monitoring of the players.
The NCAA bans athletic dorms, but in practice, athletes do get housed together, but do get spread about. When my kid was a freshman, UMich housed athletes in South and West Quads. And I know the QB had an off-campus apartment.
Oh so ND can do frequent surveillance testing on the football team, but can’t be bothered to test the rest of the students? They tested the football team twice just last week!
Professional sports franchise with a side hustle in education.
You understand.
Primarily bcos they can force athletes to line up for testing - no test, and you are off the team. Just not practical for 30k in a public Uni.
I didn’t say that and wouldn’t agree with that premise either. I simply said that a football player isn’t more likely to get myocarditis from covid than anyone else who has covid. And the football player has the benefit of getting cardiac screening before returning to the field (if they do that - if not, I wouldn’t let them play once they contracted covid).
Now are they more likely to get covid? Don’t know. Back to vigilance. Seems to me if they’re all tested and are negative and remove as many opportunities for exposure as possible (bubble like), they’re no more likely to get it than anyone else. Maybe less.
I was listening to sports radio today and a pro baseball player was talking about all the differences in the locker room and on the field. He said they now use every other locker, and they added a row of temp lockers down the middle so there is less moving around. He used to use a computer in the locker room but those have all been removed. The meals and snacks used to be in open rooms and they could get whatever they want, but now they order what they want and it is brought out to them. They enter (at least one) stadium through the outfield, and walk to the dugouts outside. He said ‘outside’ as much as possible.
Every other urinal and shower head is blocked off so they aren’t too close. Really, does it take a guy 15 minutes to pee (I thought short contacts of 15 minutes or less were okay).
I don’t think college teams can take the same precautions of separating the entire team all the time. The players also live together in smaller groups, but often 4-8 together. They eat together every day.
It’s not B1G football, but who’s watching Austin Peay vs. Central Arkansas in Montgomery, Ala.? Just started. I believe the game of the college football season. Electronic whistles too? The first play of the season is 75-yard TD.
HS football has been going on all day today. That’s been fun to watch.
Watching here @sushiritto We love college football!
We watched high school football this afternoon as well.
Let’s go Peay!
A newspaper article published yesterday referred to the University of Mississippi as a “wealthy school” due in large part to the annual revenue from football of $84,000,000.
Austin Peay (Clarkesville, Tennessee) is playing just 3 football games this season.
Arkansas State managed to schedule 9 games including home& home series against 2 teams.