As UConn waits again, college sports face tough choices
Pandemic making life very unsteady in the sports landscape
Again, UConn basketball fans. Yes, again.
COVID-19 is playing with college sports now, playing with it like a dog with a rag doll in its mouth. Players tests positive. Coaches test positive. Members of the traveling party test positive.
Games repeatedly get erased. Many are not rescheduled.
We try to be cute and say, “Stay Positive. Test Negative.” We use the familiar encouragements about remaining mentally strong, about how we’re all in this together and the need to be flexible and nimble. We take the precautions. Observe the protocol.
Yet someone tests positive anyway. COVID is the tireless, growling dog and we are the helpless rag doll being shaken back and forth. When the dog gets bored, it will drop the rag doll and go on to the bone. The dog will be back, though.
It happened again Sunday night — the second time in a month — to the UConn men’s basketball team. A member of the program tested positive.
The UConn women’s team also had its first three games, including against two Top 10 opponents, canceled because of a positive COVID test to one of its Tier I personnel (not a player or coach).
This is beyond getting old.
All we know at this point is Dan Hurley’s team has suspended team activities and they will remain on hold until requisite contact tracing and additional testing is completed, and it is deemed safe by medical professionals to resume workouts. That and, oh, yeah, the Big East opener against St. John’s on Friday at Gampel Pavilion has been postponed.
How long has Connecticut been waiting for UConn basketball to get back into the Big East? Seems like since the flu epidemic of 1918. Everyone is going to have to wait a little longer.
You can quote me extensively: COVID sucks.
A few weeks ago, I argued the NCAA should wait until a week after Bubbleville. Examine all that happened at Mohegan Sun. Examine the protocol and the data. Compare it to the games played on campuses and elsewhere. And then, somewhere around Dec. 15, make a hard call on whether to try to plough ahead or suspend the season until March 1. And, yes, that would mean May Madness. A day of reckoning in the next week or two still seems like a good idea to try to preserve the integrity of a season for as many of the teams as possible.
Let’s drop any and all façades. This is about having an NCAA Tournament and the billion dollars it makes. There is no need for another screed about greed. We know the truth. And after canceling March Madness last year the NCAA itself faces financial crisis. Serious damage would be done to many, many athletic departments among the 350 basketball schools. There are far more Hartfords than Alabamas.
The Power Five and the College Football Playoff, not beholden to the NCAA, already has dropped any pretext. The ACC decided makeup games involving Notre Dame and Clemson would not be played next weekend and they can pass go and head directly into
the conference championship game. The ACC hope, of course, is both will get into the four-team CFP, with its TV treasure chest of $5.64 billion over 12 years.
Your turn, Big Ten. With both Ohio State and Michigan dealing with some COVID issues, their game Saturday could be called off. Ohio State dominated Michigan State over the weekend despite missing 23 players. Michigan’s game with Maryland was canceled. If Ohio State is ready to play, Michigan isn’t, and no other conference school bows out of a game because of COVID to free up an opponent, that would leave Ohio State with only five games played. The Big Ten set a rule that teams must play in six to be eligible for the conference championship. That may be no problem. The next sneaky move, folks close to the situation believe, is the Big Ten simply will change its rule to five games and give the unbeaten No. 3 Buckeyes their golden pass.
Hey, it’s 2020. Anything goes. Manipulate the rules? No prob. All that romance about BYU traveling to Coastal Carolina at the last minute for a battle of Group of Five unbeatens was so sweet. And the game was the best one all season. All that and a box of chocolates might get you a kiss on Valentine’s Day. Neither BYU nor Coastal Carolina will be permitted a sniff of the CFP. Ditto Cincinnati.
Back to basketball. Sunday brought news that No. 1 Gonzaga, which has been trudging along with COVID issues for more than week, announced it was missing its next four games. A showdown with No. 2 Baylor already was called off Saturday. The UConn men already went out for two weeks in preseason last month with a COVID positive. And when his team returned without requisite defense in the opener against Central Connecticut, Dan Hurley was unafraid to go on a determined rant about teams needing a full week of practice after a fortnight on inactivity.
After a second win 48 hours later, Hurley took his team back into the lab for three days of practice that James Bouknight called chaos. Hurley called it a “cauldron of intensity,” which must go in the official leather-bound UConn coaching manual next to “not a dime” and “no escalators.”
The original plan was for UConn to play three games in “Bubbleville,” but last weekend Hurley was still unsure of that and Vanderbilt took care of the Dec. 1 game when it had to opt out with its own COVID issues. UConn beat a good USC team Thursday and wouldn’t you know it?
The stern test against North Carolina State at noon Saturday was called off 12 hours before the game. The Wolfpack had tested negative at home and again upon their arrival at Mohegan Sun, but on Friday there was a positive test. The Huskies returned to Storrs and, boom, we have another shutdown.
Initially, 40 teams were supposed to play 45 games at Bubbleville. There would be 26 games among 25 teams and all sorts of mixing and matching when teams couldn’t show because of COVID. One they arrived, 2,800 tests administered to 1,075 people including event staff, players, coaches, support staff and courtside media. There were only three positive tests at Mohegan.
UConn would have to be considered a quasi-fourth. Still, those are really good numbers. Are well-regulated one-site events — granted, much smaller than Bubbleville — the way to go? Or can having the students on semester break away from campus until mid- to late-January serve a similar purpose?
Last week, the original guidelines for a 14-day quarantine period after being exposed to COVID set forth by the CDC was reduced. Anyone who has come in contact with someone infected with COVID-19 can resume normal activity after 10 days — or seven days with a negative test result. That’s a big deal. Conferences’ medical advisory groups are expected to adopt it as soon as possible.
Still, if COVID continues to rise with scary, scary numbers, teams are going to be bouncing in and out of play like crazy.
There is no surefire solution.
I would submit that inseason pro and major college athletics receive the COVID vaccine early in the distribution. No, not in the coming days before health care workers and first responders and nursing home residents. But like in Connecticut, sometime in mid-January with the second tier.
If we are going to ask these athletes to entertain a nation and in the collegians’ case — without pay — we should protect their health as much as possible. Few of their group will die, but those with more serious cases run the risk of severe heart problems. Not to mention the chaos it has caused to seasons. Also, there is a larger percentage of doubt about the vaccine in minority communities. Seeing elite-level athletes could encourage more to take it, save lives and convince this monster to finally leave us all alone.