As Student Athletes Report to Campuses, College Football is Already Fumbling the Ball

Major League Baseball had four months to prepare for a season during the pandemic.  It only had to worry about keeping 30 teams with 780 players safe while they played their games.  Yet only three days into the season, it is facing a 12-player outbreak  that has revealed huge gaps in their plan to pull the season off.  If MLB-- with all its financial resources, can't pull this off, what do you think the NCAA's chances are for the upcoming college football season?  There are 130 FBS football programs, with over 11,000 athletes-- and that's not counting Division I, II or III. Do you think college football is really ready? 

Well, some sports writers don't think so.  Already, there are reports that there are outbreaks at several major schools:   25 at Kansas State, 32 at Oklahoma State, and 37 at Clemson.   HBO Sports has reported that there are already 400 positive COVID cases on 78 campuses around the country-- and this is during the preliminary (and optional) workout phase of college football season-- before anybody has even touched a football.   At least 15 FBS programs have decided to shut down voluntary workouts already this summer.

The NCAA has not mandated any safety standards for student athletes, leaving that to the schools themselves.  Many of the universities have cancelled all travel for faculty, yet they are willing to allow travel for student athletes-- why is their safety less important than faculty?

The NCAA has no standard testing protocol either-- and the lack of a sound testing strategy is likely to be the achilles heel for college football.  Some schools test their student athletes only upon arrival; some test only when symptoms appear-- most test weekly.   And given that testing for college athletes is lower on the totem pole than professional athletes-- wanna guess how long it will take for test results to come back?  There are reports that test results on MLB players are taking 3-7 days to come back-- I'll bet it's not any better than that for the universities.  College football is a high contact sport and student athletes live together in dorms.  The NCAA has announced that the weekly COVID tests must be done at least 72 hours prior to a weekly game- do you how many people a college player could infect while waiting for results?

There is also no standard NCAA policy on what to do when an athlete tests positive.  To make matters worse, over half of the schools in the power five conferences (Big 12,  SEC, ACC, Big 10, PAC 12) have refused to disclose numbers on how many students have tested positive.

There are also reports that some schools have been forcing their student athletes to sign waivers, absolving the school of any liability for COVID-related incidents- the most notable one being the University of Tennessee.  The SEC Commissioner told HBO Sports that when they were made aware of such waivers, they were eliminated.

The Ivy league, MEAC and Patriot League have canceled their seasons outright-- some have delayed to later in the school year.    It's widely believed that college football leaders are pushing ahead with their risky plans to play as soon as possible because they’re deeply fearful that if they significantly delay the season, they’ll never start. But at some point, they need to be honest with themselves: If there’s a reasonably good chance that they couldn’t finish the season or that teams would have to fold their tents a week or two in, what’s the point in starting?