Bringing back sports:
Key concern is how to keep athletes safe — will plenty of testing be enough?
The big business of sports always proclaims earnest concern about players’ health.
The coronavirus crisis might put that concept severely to the test.
The prospect of playing games without fans would put athletes in the crosshairs of the disease. Unlike fans, who would have a choice whether or not to attend, professional athletes are employees. Their job is playing games. They don’t really have an option.
Amid the mounting pressure to return to games, athletes’ health often seems the least of the concerns. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the return of Premier League soccer would give “a muchneeded boost to national morale.”
That didn’t sit well with Tottenham defender Danny Rose.
“I don’t give a f— about the nation’s morale,” he said in an Instagram interview. “People’s lives are at risk. Foot
ball shouldn’t even be spoken about coming back until the numbers have dropped massively.”
As sports around the world are contemplating a return to the field, almost all plan to begin without fans. But how will they keep athletes safe?
“You can’t have any closer interaction than football,” former 49ers quarterback Steve Young said. “If someone tests positive, well, then what do you do?”
The key, as with most phases of getting back to normal, will be testing, testing and then some more testing. This week, a handful of NBA teams reopened training facilities in states where allowed. But even some teams located in such “open” states are balking unless there enough tests for everyone.
“We can’t ensure anyone’s safety,” said Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
This week, according to reports, some of the league’s stars — including the Warriors’ Stephen Curry, the Lakers’ LeBron James and the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, held a private conference call to discuss safety measures and agreed to play if proper health protocols were in place.
The prospect of restarting sports likely will require tens of thousands of tests — or perhaps hundreds of thousands. But as we’ve learned — in places as high profile as the White House — a negative test one day doesn’t guarantee a negative test a few days later. Will athletes be tested every day? And if one athlete tests positive, will the entire sport be shut down for three weeks?
Gavin Newsom, governor of California, wonders just that.
“It’s difficult for me to imagine what the leagues do when one or two of their key personnel or players are tested positive,” Newsom said last week. “It’s inconceivable to me that that’s not a likely scenario.”
But, according to the Athletic, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told players on a conference call that he hopes that daily testing would be the solution to avoiding stoppages in play and mass quarantines. The NBA is exploring playoffs in “bubble” cities — perhaps Las Vegas and Orlando’s Disney World — where everyone would be tested upon reentry.
The NBA knows better than any sport the perils of leaguewide infections. On March 11, Utah’s Rudy Gobert tested positive. The league, which was humming into the final weeks of its season, with the prospect of an intriguing playoffs, abruptly shut down. Subsequently, several other players tested positive.
A positive test in a sports setting means retracing a chain of contact with teammates, employees and opposition.
“You would have to have major advances in the technology of our testing before you put athletes back together in close proximity,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, an infectiousdisease specialist at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health, in an interview last month. “From our vantage point, to even conceive how it could possibly work, certain things have to happen. You have to have better tests and have to be able to confirm if antibody tests can assure a person is immune.”
Sanitation and deep cleaning are other ways to combat the disease. Both fans and athletes alike will be awash in disinfectants, and teams certainly will increase the visibility and presence of custodial staffs.
We’ve all seen images of disinfectant trucks spraying the streets in Europe, or disinfectant fogs in factories.
But such procedures may be more a matter of optics than science.
“We have no idea whether that does anything,” Swartzberg said. “It treats the psyche of people. The primary way people get infected is by being in close proximity.”
And athletes are in very close proximity. They play contact sports. Off the fields and courts, locker rooms are cramped areas. Many new facilities have extra space — for example, in Levi’s Stadium, the 49ers probably could coopt another area. And there’s enough room in Chase Center to keep Curry socially distanced at all times. But at Oracle Park, the Giants’ space is limited. Because of health concerns, teams in all sports may be allowed to start with expanded rosters, but that means even tighter quarters.
“Clubhouses are a closed situation,” said Stan Conte, who served as the head trainer for both the Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers. “You can do routine cleanings of the clubhouse, but you’re still breathing the same air. And the real problem would be before and after games. What do the players do? Where do
they go?”
Highprofile players, like the Angels’ Mike Trout and the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, have balked at the concept of being quarantined and sacrificing their normal life in order to somehow salvage a season in 2020.
“There are so many people involved in a game: umpires, clubhouse employees, coaches,” Conte said. “How do you control all those people? You can’t put them in prison and only take them out on game days.”
An ancillary problem is how to get players in shape to start seasons, with abbreviated training camps. Most athletes are already doing what they can. Washington quarterback Alex Smith, attempting to return to football from a devastating leg injury, has his “Virtual OTA” loaded on his iPad.
“It’s crazy how far the technology has come,” Smith said.
There is an array of tools for athletes. David Aufhauser is the CEO of NeuroTrainer, a startup that uses virtualreality technology to help train the athlete’s mind.
“Their peripheral vision, multitasking, decision making, situation awareness, their calm and focus,” Aufhauser said. “All the things that make them perform better on the field.”
The physical demands of a quick startup still will be challenging. Conte said that in his experience, in the offseason, there is a percentage of players who train extremely hard and risk overdoing it, a percentage who sit on their couches and eat pizza, and a percentage who do about 75% of their normal workouts and are able to maintain their overall fitness level.
There’s a concern that rushing back into games with abbreviated preparation will lead to increased injury.
“We always see more injuries in April,” Conte said, of the normal baseball season.
After the NFL’s extended lockout in 2011, a study found that players suffered more Achilles tendon injuries in the first two weeks of training camp than in an entire season.
Torn tendons and sprained ligaments are the normal part of sports health. But what might be asked of players and others in coming months is to face a much less obvious, far more mysterious health risk. As the pressure mounts — from political leaders, broadcast partners and the harsh economic realities — to bring back sports, the safety of athletes is at stake.
Teams like to say that the health of their athletes is their top priority. That trope is about to be put to the test — and we’ll see if this test is accurate.