How Saban returned to action so fast
A private jet, the crimson “A” of the University of Alabama painted on its tail, lifted off from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, around daybreak Saturday with extraordinary cargo: cellular debris collected from the nose of football coach Nick Saban.
Three days earlier, Saban had announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Now, still in isolation hours before second-ranked Alabama was to play third-ranked Georgia, Saban knew the specimen aboard the plane was his diagnostic lifeline to the sideline.
If a laboratory in Mobile, Alabama, reported that the sample was negative for the virus, Saban, who had asserted that he had no symptoms and had repeatedly tested negative after his initial result, would be allowed to leave isolation a week early and coach in the prime-time game.
And so it was. Hours after a final negative result — and with no small help from a rule change that Southeastern Conference leaders approved six days before the positive test — Saban led the Crimson Tide to a 41-24 victory.
The episode underscored two aspects of the response to the virus: Even
the most rigorous tests — in this case a polymerase chain reaction, widely considered the gold standard of infectious disease diagnostics — can falter. And, more than seven months into the nation’s coronavirus crisis, access to testing remains inconsistent, except among America’s elite.
Tests remain scarce in many communities, and too expensive to allow some leagues and universities to compete this fall, but they have more than once helped break a prominent figure out of isolation.
“It’s a reminder of the stark disparity between the haves and have-nots,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health.
Alabama’s football program is clearly one of the haves. Anchored by one of the most celebrated brands in college football — the university claims 17 national championships, including five during Saban’s 14-year tenure — Alabama’s athletic department is among the country’s wealthiest. Saban will earn more than $9 million this season.
As the pandemic has strained athletic finances on campuses nationwide, it has, in some ways, put Alabama’s resources and football obsession on greater display.
The SEC, for instance, requires its football teams to be tested at least three times a week under a protocol that hinges almost entirely on PCR testing, one of the most accurate and expensive techniques on the market. But Alabama opted for daily screenings of its football players and coaches.
Last Wednesday, Saban learned that one of his PCR tests, which was processed at a local laboratory, had come back positive. He headed home, oversaw practice via Zoom and held a news conference, saying he had been “very surprised” by the result.
With the low case count around the football complex — only Saban and Alabama’s athletic director tested positive, according to the university — and Saban an evangelist for masks and physical distancing, people wondered whether that test was flawed.
Pcr-based tests hunt for specific stretches of genetic material, which they can copy repeatedly until their targets reach detectable levels. That makes it easy to identify the virus, even when it is scarce, and difficult to mistake something else for the pathogen. But as with any procedure, mistakes are possible.
Differences in how test samples are handled, processed and analyzed can upend results. Pressure to speed up turnaround times could make it harder to keep machines running in top shape, or to ensure consistency.
“The most likely culprit was probably some sort of contamination,” possibly from a nearby sample from someone who had the virus, said Sarah Jung, the scientific director of clinical microbiology at Children’s Hospital Colorado. “This is detecting things we can’t see. That makes it all the more difficult.”
Mishaps are also bound to happen during a flood of tests. Alabama has said little about its testing during the pandemic, but the football program is administering at least 120 screenings a day, Saban suggested on ESPN on Saturday. The SEC’S 14 programs are collectively running thousands of PCR tests every week.
“It’s a game of numbers,” Jung said. “I’m not saying it’s inevitable, but when groups like this test a lot, the chances for a situation like this to occur increase.”
Alabama swiftly began its investigation into Saban’s positive result. There were medical reasons to try to confirm the result, but urgent football ones, too.
Less than a week before Saban said he tested positive, SEC chancellors and presidents had approved an update to the league’s medical protocols. Under the new policy, an asymptomatic person who tested positive for the virus could take another PCR test within 24 hours. If that test yielded a negative result, the person could take two more PCR tests, each separated by 24 hours. If all three results were negative, the person could return to competition.
Rules made clear that Saban could not coach, even from home, if he had the virus. If Alabama wanted Saban in charge against Georgia, the new approach was its only option. And even if the plan worked, it would not be clear until Saturday, the day of a game long seen as one to shape the race toward the College Football Playoff.
Less than 24 hours after the positive result, Saban took the first of the three Sec-sanctioned tests he would need to pass to exit isolation.
His first formal follow-up tests, conducted around 7 a.m. Thursday and Friday, showed negative results, as did two other PCR tests that Alabama ordered “out of an abundance of caution.” By Friday, word had begun to circulate through the SEC that Saban might prove eligible to coach.
Driving the last specimen to Mobile would have taken more than three hours on game day, potentially stripping Saban of precious time with his team. So Alabama athletics turned to its speediest option: its jet.
Before noon in Tuscaloosa, with the Crimson Tide Foundation’s plane already long gone from Mobile, the decisive report arrived.
Saban headed to work.