Counting blessings
AD White says Knights fortunate to have avoided outbreak, cancellations
After watching another week of postponements and cancellations across the college football landscape, UCF athletics director Danny White can only sit back and count his blessings.
“If you would have asked me before the season if I thought we would be where we’re at with three games left having played six and no postponements or cancellations yet, I would have said you’re crazy,” White said during an interview with the Orlando Sentinel.
UCF is among a shrinking number of football programs that have avoided canceling or postponing a game due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Nine of the 11 American Athletic Conference teams have faced game delays or cancellations this season, according to Stadium’s Brett McMurphy.
“We’ve been pretty fortunate in terms of being lucky with our opponents,” White said. “And I think the vast majority of our student-athletes— football and all of our other sports — have been really responsible with the bubble. Our percent positive rate is extremely low in our studentathlete population when you consider what’s happening in our
community around us and on every college campus, it just shows these kids are committed to their teams and willing to make the sacrifices they need to make.”
The amount of testing that athletes and staff members are put through on a weekly basis are in place to help quickly thwart a virus outbreak. On the football team, everyone is tested three times aweek: two PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests are administered during the week and an antigen test is conducted on Fridays before a game.
White said the overall cost of the testing has been better than what he anticipated, but the department still anticipates spending between $1 million and $2 million to test all of its athletes.
“We’ve had a great partnership with Orlando Health and they’ve been helping us find ways to get testing insured,” said White. “They’ve been great with both logistics — … how they administer the tests and by finding ways to save dollars on it.”
While the school doesn’t share the cost of its weekly PCR tests with the AAC, White said the conference does pick up the tab on the weekly antigen tests.
White said it’s difficult coming up with an average cost for each individual PCR test because of how it’s handled through insurance. Sometimes it can takeweeks before the department knows the exact amount spent and, even then, things can change.
White backs Heupel decision: White was disappointed several football players were part of a traffic stop and heated dispute with campus police on Oct. 29.
The incident led to the arrest of defensive back Antwan Collier, who was charged with driving without a license and carrying a firearm without a license. Police reported smelling marijuana in Collier’s car and found three guns inside. During the arrest, police body cam footage showed several football players shouting obscene insults at the police officers. Four players were removed from the team following the incident.
“There’s a lot of challenges kids are going through and we had obviously some student-athletes make a pretty big mistake thatwe determined that you can’t recover from,” White said. “We’re going to support their academic pursuits. They’re still UCF students and we want them to graduate, but it’s a unique opportunity — that’s what I talk about with our student-athletes all the time — to represent the UCF brand and it’s a responsibility and it’s an opportunity to build your own brand within our community and our alumni base.
“When you make that level of a mistake, you get to a point where you can’t represent the brand anymore.”
White said he’s always involved with the coaches when there are disciplinary issues and he met with UCF football coach Josh Heupel to discuss the matter.
“We were on the same page,” White said. “We would never make that serious of a decision without having collaboration.”