Bowl games confront COVID surge with ad hoc protocols
The 2021-22 NCAA Postseason Bowl Handbook features 23 pages of policies and procedures for bowl game operators, covering everything from how many free tickets each football player may receive (no more than six) to the permissible spots on the field for sponsors’ logos (three), complete with illustrations.
The subsection on “medical procedures” mandates that a physician and certified athletic trainer(s) be onsite for all practices and game day and, among other things, that team benches be provided drinking cups, a water cooler, ice chests and water bottles for each practice and game.
But there is no mention of the coronavirus, the contagion that has roiled the country and most of the world for nearly two years and on Thursday forced the cancellation of the Hawaii Bowl after an outbreak on the Hawaii Warriors’ roster. That followed Wednesday’s announcement that Texas A&M was withdrawing from the Dec. 31 Gator Bowl, unable to field a team given its own coronavirus spread and plague of injuries. Rutgers, with a 5-7 record, will replace Texas A&M.
When it comes to COVID protocols for this season’s bowl games — Is full vaccination required? What about periodic testing? — the NCAA is silent, deferring to the policies of the teams’ respective conferences and to local authorities.
“Bowls are working directly with the conferences to manage protocols based on their local area and conference/team protocols,” NCAA spokesman Chris Radford wrote in an email.
The upshot — amid the surge of the highly transmissible omicron variant that has led to a pause in the NHL season, the rescheduling of some NFL games and the postponement or cancellation of several NBA and college basketball games — is a disjointed, ad hoc set of protocols at the more than 40 bowl games.
That’s because the NCAA has nominal authority over bowls, which are run by conferences and independent bowl owners, whether nonprofit or for-profit entities such as ESPN Events.
The NCAA’s role in those games is largely symbolic, chiefly “certifying” that each bowl meets minimal standards for operations.
The College Football Playoff management committee, which runs the sport’s national championship, updated its COVID policy Wednesday to add precautions and a measure of coherence for the biggest games — the Jan. 10 national championship in Indianapolis, the Dec. 31 playoff semifinals (the Cotton and Orange bowls) and the Fiesta and Peach bowls. It also announced that any semifinalists that can’t play because of COVID-19 would forfeit, with the opponent advancing to the championship.
Meanwhile, more than three dozen other bowls are following a combination of local and conference requirements.
Further confounding matters, the NCAA set protocols for the Football Championship Subdivision championship game Jan. 8 in Frisco, Texas, between Montana State and North Dakota State, and the preceding playoff games.
That’s because the NCAA runs the FCS championship in the same way it runs the national championships of every varsity sport other than major college football.
As of Thursday, the NCAA isn’t ramping up the testing protocols it has mandated all season, according to Greg Johnson, another NCAA spokesman.
That means for the FCS championship game the teams and their officials must “attest” to either being fully vaccinated or having a negative coronavirus test one to three days before arrival, based on the type of test. Beyond that, no additional tests will be conducted onsite unless someone develops symptoms in Frisco.
The medical staff onsite will conduct the tests, and the NCAA will cover the expense.
“There may be other operational areas where adjustments might have to be made to help fight the spread of the virus (ex: moving press conferences to being conducted virtually),” Johnson wrote. “The Division I Football Committee
and NCAA staff will continue to monitor the situation.”
As for the more prominent College Football Playoff, its updated COVID protocols say all interaction between the media and players and coaches will be conducted remotely, only essential personnel will be allowed on the field (no sponsors or guests) and all workers with field access must test negative for the coronavirus within 72 hours of kickoff or be fully vaccinated.
The CFP is not prescriptive regarding the testing of players and coaches. It directs each school to use whatever testing arrangement it had used during the regular season and arrange for any testing at the game site. It also requires each conference to accept each other conference’s testing protocol.
In lieu of mandates, it states schools are “encouraged to ensure that studentathletes and staff take prudent measures and follow medical recommendations to help prevent the contraction or transmission of COVID before, during and after they travel to the game sites.”
Different schools interpret that in different ways.
Michigan already had planned a mass vaccination for players, coaches and staff to get booster shots the day before they left for Florida in advance of their Dec. 31 semifinal against Georgia.
The ACC’s testing policy, which remains in effect for bowl participants such as Pittsburgh (in the Peach Bowl), states that unvaccinated athletes on teams with a vaccination rate less than 85% are tested at least three times per week. On teams with a vaccination rate of 85% or higher, they’re tested at least once a week.
Last season, the NCAA took a decidedly more cautious approach to the postseason than did bowl operators. The NCAA canceled all championships for fall 2020 sports because of COVID, while most of the bowl games played on, with Alabama trouncing Ohio State before a limited crowd of roughly 15,000 (20% of normal capacity) at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla.