Canceling high school football was right decision
Fall weekends in Connecticut won’t be the same without high school football, but canceling the season was the right thing to do.
The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, after weeks of needless recalcitrance, finally took the good advice of the state Department of Public Health on Friday and announced that full-contact high school football would not take place this fall.
There’s no question that the decision was the right one. We are in the thick of a global pandemic, and even though Connecticut has had success in keeping the spread of the coronavirus to a minimum, there have been recent flare-ups that show the virus is still very much with us — in our schools, hospitals and nursing homes.
It was just over a week ago that the University of Connecticut quarantined an entire residence hall, where many members of the football team live, because of positive cases of COVID-19. Just a week earlier, six football players had tested positive for COVID-19, and all UConn football activities were “paused.”
Playing full-contact high school football in the midst of this wouldn’t have been simply irresponsible — it would have shown reckless disregard for public health and safety.
Many school superintendents had already expressed serious reservations about playing football, despite the CIAC.
“I understand the CIAC can make a recommendation to kind of move ahead with everything, and I don’t want to say ignore DPH’s concerns, but as a school system, we can’t,” Enfield superintendent Chris Drezek said. “Since March, we’ve been guided by our public health officials. It would be irresponsible for us to go against the guidance of DPH.”
Mr. Drezek is correct: The CIAC, a non-governmental non-profit organization, has no authority over who plays what. It’s up to the schools to decide whether to participate in interscholastic sports, and it is reassuring that so many administrators said they would heed the advice of the experts at the Department of Public Health.
But even in its statement on Friday, the CIAC refused to acknowledge the DPH’s position that full-contact football is too much of a health risk. Instead, it based its decision on politics.
“Without DPH support, the CIAC cannot move forward with a full-contact season as it would place superintendents and boards of education in the impossible position of acting against the recommendation of a state agency,” the CIAC said in a written statement.
It makes no sense to blame the cancellation of the season on a lack of “DPH support” — in this case, the DPH is clearly supporting the health of Connecticut’s high school students. Further, this has nothing to do with some convoluted disagreement between schools and the DPH. School officials repeatedly said they would follow DPH guidelines, as they have since the pandemic erupted in the spring. The only group that bucked the DPH’s advice was the CIAC.
The CIAC’s statement should have read, “the
CIAC cannot move forward with a full-contact season as it would expose the players, their families, their friends and their classmates to a serious health risk.”
It is unfortunate that the CIAC will not acknowledge that participating in certain sports during a pandemic is dangerous, and it does not bode well for the spring, or next fall, when this discussion is likely to come up again.
If the CIAC isn’t getting serious about the health risks of playing sports in a world wracked by COVID19, then it is going to render itself irrelevant in the discussion.
The Department of Public Health was right in its guidance, superintendents were right to follow it, and the CIAC was right to drop its plans for fall football.