VIRUS BY THE BOOK
Texas’ 12 FBS schools have to clear several hurdles eachweek before taking the field
Schools have protocols to follow to decide if they can play.
In the world of COVID-19-era college football, Sunday is a day not for resting but for testing.
Each Sunday this fall brings a new set of checklists and guideposts that players and staff members must negotiate before they can think about playing, let alone winning, on any given Saturday.
It has not been a uniformly smooth road for Texas’ 12 Football Bowl Subdivision teams. Nine of the 12 have had at least one game on their revised schedules affected by their own positive COVID tests or those of an opponent.
This weekend alone, Texas A&M and Rice were idle because their games against Tennessee and Louisiana Tech, respectively, were postponed as college football enters the final month of its truncated, delayed regular season. Nationally, 15 games were postponed or canceled thisweekend.
But with the exception of Rice, which delayed its season opener into October, each of the 12 Texas schools will exit this weekend having played at least a half-dozen games, which speaks to their success in maintaining the discipline required for success and health.
“We’re asking 18- to 22-yearolds in the most social time of their lives to bemoremature than many adults are being,” said Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades. “They’re doing a pretty darn good job of following the rules and being disciplined.”
A month remains, though, in which things can go awry quickly.
“We can’t let our guard down,” said Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork.“We can’t get too comfortable, especiallywith our communities surging right now. But everyone has done a great job.”
While each of the five conferences represented by the 12 Texas schools — the American Athletic, Big 12, Conference USA, Southeastern and Sun Belt — have their own weekly procedures, all are on the same approximate schedule.
Each Sunday, Baylor’s players, coaches and travel party staff members undergo nasal pharyngeal PCR tests, the results of which are received within 24 hours. A second round of PCR tests are administered Wednesday, and rapid antigen tests take place each Friday with results within a couple of hours.
“If it’s a home game, we can let the visiting team know that we’re good to go, and if it’s a road game, we’re waiting to hear from the other team that it’s OK to get on a bus or plane,” Rhoades said.
Each Big 12 schoolmust submit a form to the league office attesting that every member of the traveling party has tested negative for COVID-19.
Similarly, A&M tests on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday and receives results a day later, using PCR tests in each case. SEC schools have a roster check each Tuesday to inform the league office that they can meet the requirement of having 53 scholarship players that have not tested positive or are not being quarantined for contact tracing.
“If there are any red flags, we stay in touch with the SEC office and with our opponent,” Bjork said.
The American, which includes SMU and the University of Houston, created what commissioner Mike Aresco describes as the American Conference Risk Assessment Tool, or ACRAT, which computes positive cases, players in contact tracing quarantine, community spread, campus spread and other factors to determine whether teams could be at risk to play.
AAC schools typically test on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with PCR tests early in the week and an antigen test Friday. The conference’s medical committee meets three times a week to discuss test results, ACRAT scores and other factors.
“We’re very cautious,” Aresco said. “We started with one test, then went to two PCR tests and then the antigen tests as well. If we have a positive, many of our schools will retest several times to see whether it was a false positive or whether other things have to be done, and they test other close contacts on a regular basis.
“What we don’t want to do is have anyone on the field during a game with the virus. And I think we’ve done a good job of controlling that. We have found no evidence of transmission on the field.”
As is the case with other conferences, the American also requires schools to test players diagnosed with COVID-19 for myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can lead to cardiac arrest as a result of physical exertion.
“We had a nationally respected cardiologist tell us that this was not a reason for not playing,” he said. “… The incidence of thiswas nowhere near what we thought it might be. But before you can play again, you have to go through the cardiac workup.”
Aresco said the American also has drastically reduced the number of people on the sidelines, as have other leagues, and requires that those within the field bubble be tested.
Rhoades said Baylor requires its traveling party to wear goggles, face shields and masks on flights along and has eliminated food and drink service.
Along with roster requirements — the Big12 allows-walk-ons to be counted among each school’s 53 available players — some leagues call for seven offensive linemen, five interior defensive linemen and a quarterback to be certified as COVID-free or not quarantined for contact tracing.
Failure to achieve those numbers, even if the total remains above 53 roster players, can result in postponement or cancellation, which occurred when Baylor ran short of offensive linemen before its game against Houston.
While contagion levels haves been low, schools frequently have been laid low by contact tracing requirements. Schools generally use Centers for Disease Control guidelines, which include 15 minutes of cumulative exposure over a 24-hour period to an infected person, as a guideline for placing a player or staff member into a two-week quarantine.
“You would be more likely to contact trace a position group or roommates, and see if people had spent time together during meetings or if they had been to a party with someone,” Aresco said.
“Each of our schools has someone on staff who has taken the Johns Hopkins contact training course and have worked with their local health authorities, since contact tracing procedures vary from place to place.”
At A&M, which had two active player cases within its football program and an undisclosed number of players in contact tracing, Bjork said players undergoing contact tracing are isolated to their apartments. Officials decide on a case-by-case basis if roommates are required to move out while a player is in quarantine.
“They’re essentially isolated to their room, they take all their classes and meetings online and can’t come to the facility unless it’s for amedical reason,” he said. “Food is delivered to their residences by our nutrition staff.”
Bjork said the school applies different interview methods for players who test positive and those who are required to isolate for contact tracing reasons.
“If you test positive, we do a thorough assessment of, ‘OK, wherehave youbeen in the last 48 hours? Who have you been around? Did you go out to dinner with somebody on Sunday night? Did someone come to your apartment? Were you with your girlfriend or family members?
“If you’re a contact trace person, it’s just, ‘David, you came in contact with Ross. Ross is positive, so, David, you’re in quarantine,’” he said.
Rhoades said Baylor is one of several schools working with the CDC to determine if quarantine can be reduced from 14 days to seven.
As the season nears an end and efforts ramp up toward distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine next year, speculation will continue on how many of this year’s reforms will continue should the virus be contained by the fall of 2021.
“Wewill see a lot of the changes become permanent parts of our culture,” said Mike Perrin, the Houston attorney who was the athletic director at Texas from 2015 to 2018.
“I think the intercollegiate world has done a good job of dealing with the strange hand that has been dealt to them. It never stops in the world of being an athletic director. Life goes on every day, every hour.”
Aersco wondered whether schools will have the right to require that athletes get the vaccine to play.
“I don’t know if we can do so legally, but we would encourage everybody connected to our games to get the vaccine.” he said.
Bjork said the business side of athletics, and perhaps recruiting as well, will be impacted by the boom in virtual meetings that have become standard operating procedure during the pandemic.
Rhoades said he anticipates a slow return to packed stadiums and arenas, and he expects such innovations as touchless delivery of concessions to become standard. Sideline crowds also will be reduced, he said.
As for finances, “For some schools, it will take several years for them to work their way back. Others may need only a year or two,” Rhoades said. “But the deficit is real. Canceled games equal a decrease in TV revenue, and then there are ticket sales where there’s been a lot of lost revenue.
“Somewill have the capacity to get through it quicker than others, but there’s nobody in FBS, nobody in the Power Five, that won’t go unscathed.”