A fall college football season on shaky ground. Where things stand for Miami, others
A week before FBS schools can begin mandatory workouts with players, the college football season stands on shaky ground, at risk of being postponed or delayed because of rising cases of coronavirus nationally.
“Can we adjust our behavior and our sense of social responsibility quickly to a level we haven’t seen in the last few weeks? If people keep congregating without masks and we keep having these spreads, we’re not going to be playing college sports this fall, and there will be nothing for fans to attend,” Pacific 12 commissioner Larry Scott said in a discussion with Andy Katz on the NCAA’s Twitter feed last week.
“We need an enhanced sense of responsibility. These next few weeks are going to be a defining moment. Unless we see a change in the trajectory of the spread of the virus pretty quickly, the situation is a lot more perilous than it was a few weeks ago.”
UM athletic director Blake James told the Packer and Durham show that college football officials are starting to feel “nervous” about the season proceeding as planned.
“There’s no doubt there’s been a little bit of pessimism here in the last couple of weeks that we really hadn’t had for probably about four to six weeks,” Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour told ESPN.
Several schools —- including Arizona, Houston, Boise State and Kansas State — have canceled voluntary workouts — because of outbreaks among athletes.
“It’s going to be a bumpy road, and the likelihood of a team or teams playing 12 games is probably smaller now than I thought it was before,” Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor told ESPN.
The Ivy League will announce Wednesday if its football season will go as scheduled, be moved to the spring or canceled. Forbes said it’s “98 percent” likely that the Ivy League will move football season to the spring. That might influence the decisions of other conferences, because the presidents of those universities are respected by their peers.
Conferences and school presidents —- not the NCAA — will determine when and whether a season will be played. UM president Julio Frenk told the Miami Herald last week that he remains hopeful a fall season can be played, but there’s no final decision.
Scott and Brian Hainline — the NCAA’s chief medical officer — said there’s no drop-dead date to determine if the season will be played as scheduled, but Hainline said “July 13 is one important marker, when we switch from voluntary workouts to mandatory on site.”
Scott said: “I’ve been reluctant honestly, with my colleagues, to pick a date when we’re going to decide [if there’s a football season this fall].… There could be decisions next week at some schools or conferences.”
One concern for athletic directors is how much the disease will spread among college football players once they begin interacting with the general student body population on campus in the weeks ahead.
“What happens when thousands of young people come back to our campuses?” Scott said. “The early indications… give us reason to be concerned.”
Scott says he’s still hopeful that football season can start as planned, but “there’s been a lot of work done on a conference-only schedule, an abbreviated schedule, a postponed schedule, maybe even a spring schedule.”
The Atlantic Coast Conference is believed to have done the same.
Other developments on the state of college football:
▪ UM players have been told to proceed and prepare as if the season will be played on time, but nobody can tell them definitively that it will be. Attendance at voluntary workouts has been decent, but some players haven’t always shown up, according to a source briefed on the situation.
In a virtual meeting with UM players last week, coach Manny Diaz reminded his players that he does not want them working out in noncampus gyms or to get off-campus massages for muscle treatment. From what coaches have told the UM players and their parents, Miami had avoided any type of COVID outbreak among the football players, as of late last week.
▪ One parent of a UM player said the expectation is that players will wear visors during games. A UM spokesman did not confirm that, saying “we’re still in the planning process, and any equipment decisions would be based on ACC/NCAA/institutional guidelines.”
▪ South Carolina governor Henry McMaster said if COVID cases continue to rise, “we will not be able to have college football. We will not be able to have high school football.”
▪ Penn State’s Barbour told ESPN that playing in the spring “would be a last resort,” adding that “one of the biggest challenges [of a spring season] — and it’s probably the biggest one in my mind — is the proximity to next season, and frankly a second lost spring ball. Overcomeable, if perhaps we’re willing to have a shortened season — again in the category of ‘something is better than nothing,’ that may not be a problem at all.”
Asked about the wisdom of a fall season, Hainline said: “To say let’s start in January may make no more sense than saying let’s start next June or let’s start now. We can still plan on a fall season. Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”
But Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley told OUDaily.com that he would be OK with a spring football season: “I think the people who say it’s not doable, in my opinion, just don’t want to think about it. I just think it would be unwise to take any potential option off the table right now, and I think it would be very difficult to say that the spring’s not a potential option. I, for one, think it’s very doable.”
▪ Hainline and Scott were adamant that players would be making a mistake if they try to catch the virus with the objective of achieving herd immunity before football season.
“I haven’t met one infectious disease person who thinks that’s a good idea,” Hainline said. “Not only the potential complications of our young athletes, but if you develop COVID and have no symptoms, we don’t know if that immunity lasts more than a month, two months, three months. That high-risk individual could have a 6 to 10 percent chance of dying. Herd immunity should be stopped. That should not even be a consideration.”
▪ Conferences have been working to develop testing protocols among member schools. But it’s riskier when teams play out of conference.
For example: Miami opens against Temple Sept. 5, and Temple’s conference — the American Athletic — at this point is unable to get results back quickly enough to test players the day before a game and doesn’t anticipate being able to do so by the fall, conference commissioner Mike Aresco told ESPN.
At AAC schools and perhaps elsewhere, final COVID tests for the week might need to be administered Thursday. Rapid testing is more costly and less accessible.
UM has declined to say when or how often it will test student-athletes, and UM’s second and third scheduled opponents (Wagner and UAB) have declined to say if they will share their testing protocols and results with Miami before their games.
The Pac-12’s Scott said he hopes to reach an agreement with nonconference opponents “on a testing standard that would give us trust and confidence.” The ACC has not publicly addressed that issue.
▪ CBS said five Big 12 athletic directors are in the early stages of setting thresholds for postponements, cancellations and forfeits. Among the possibilities: canceling games when a team loses 25 percent of its players on scholarship (usually 85).
▪ Hainline said “there should be no one on a sideline or on campus without a mask.”
This story was originally published July 6, 2020 at 2:15 PM.
