Building bubbles: Cautious 1st steps toward football season
College football is scheduled to kick off in less than three months and there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful that games will be played Labor Day weekend.
Universities across the country are taking the first cautious, detailed steps toward playing football in a pandemic, attempting to build COVID-19-free bubbles around their teams as players begin voluntary workouts.
“I think the start of the race has a lot to do with how you finish it,” Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades said.
Thousands of athletes will be tested for COVID- 19, though not all. Masks will need to be worn — most of the time. Some schools will have players pumping iron this week. Others are waiting a few more weeks.
“There’s an element of this that’s kind of like building an airplane as you fly it in that we’re learning so much more really every week,” Notre Dame football team Dr. Matt Leiszler said. “But it’s a moving target at times.”
For months, health officials including the NCAA’s chief medical officer have said widespread and efficient COVID-19 testing is pivotal to bringing back sports. Now that exists, and at many schools every player will be tested before they are permitted to enter a team facility.
Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork said the school has conducted just under 500 tests on coaches, staff and athletes since May 18. The Pac-12 is the only major college football conference in which all the members have agreed to test all returning athletes for COVID-19.
Athletes testing positive for the disease have already been reported at Arkansas State, Marshall and Oklahoma State and elsewhere.
Expect that list to grow, and there is no standardized protocol for testing under the most recent NCAA guidelines, which is why plans are different from school to school. Missouri initially announced it would not test all athletes for COVID-19, then said it would. Michigan State will give its athletes two PRC tests ( often done with a nasal swab), with a seven-day quarantine in between, before they cause use team facilities. Tulane will be giving every football player PRC and antibody tests.
“You know, there’s nothing that says my testing is going to protect my guys any better than their screening is going to. We don’t know,” said Dr. Greg Stewart, team physician for Tulane’s athletic department. “And probably for most of the schools across the country, you know athletic departments are the canary in the coal mine.”
Defending national champion LSU is testing each athlete for coronavirus antibodies upon arrival to campus; some will also get a PCR test to check for an active infection. A positive antibody test at LSU will trigger a PCR test and a positive PCR test means that player will have to isolate for a period of time.
Shelly Mullenix, LSU senior associate athletic director and director of wellness, said some players who test positive for antibodies but negative for active infection will also be isolated depending on symptoms or risk of previous exposure. All players were prescribed a seven-day “quasi-quarantine,” Mullenix said, after receiving their antibody tests.
Having players return to campus infected is worrisome but inevitable. The protocols being put in place are designed to catch and address that. The real challenge is keeping the players from getting infected after they return.
Schoo ls hope to transition to required team activities in mid-July. A copy of the the Football Oversight Committee’s six-week plan includes a typical fourweek preseason practice schedule preceded by two weeks during which teams can do up 20 hours per week of weight training, conditioning, film study, meetings and walkthroughs with coaches.
Players would not be permitted to wear helmets and pads during walk-throughs, but a ball could be used for instruction. The plan, which still needs to be approved by the Division I Council, was obtained Monday by The Associated Press and first reported by Sports Illustrated.
Of course, there is only so much schools can do to manage 18- to 22-year-old football players.
“What you worry about ism this is two hours a day, right?” Rhoades said. “And so what are student athletes, what are young men as it pertains to football, doing the other 22 hours?”
The message coaches, administrators and medical staff are trying to get across to their players is their behavior is an important as testing, screening and disinfecting. Limit the exposure to people outside the team bubble. That night out at the bar or the weekend trip to the beach could lead to an infection that sets back the whole team — or something worse.
“What we’re trying to impress upon them,” Stewart said, “is that if this season is important to you, then you have to do things different this year than you have done ever before and maybe even ever again.”