Can football afford COVID-19 testing?
Without transparency, FSU situation will remain murky.
Here’s the one potential and perhaps preeminent problem with the Florida State Seminoles and their controversial COVID-19 testing protocol and procedures.
Could it be that all of the money FSU’s flat-broke athletic department should be spending on testing its players is in Willie Taggart’s bank account?
Go ahead and laugh, but I’m only half-kidding.
Maybe the reason FSU is being accused by some of its own players of “lies” when it comes to how frequently the players are being tested for COVID-19 is because the Seminoles simply cannot afford the amount of testing it’s going to take to make sure players are as safe as possible. It’s no secret that FSU’s athletic department was already millions of dollars in debt even before the pandemic and then took an additional financial gut punch when Taggart was fired after a year-and-a-half with $20 million still left on his contract.
And, believe me, this isn’t just an FSU problem; it’s a college football problem. The fact is even big-time Power 5 institutions of higher earning don’t have the financial wherewithal to conduct the constant testing it takes to reasonably control the spread of the virus.
There’s a reason NBA players and staff are being tested every day at $140 per test — even when they’re quarantined in a bubble at Disney away from the general public. Likewise, the NFL is testing its players daily “until further notice.”
Why the daily testing? Because, according to most medical experts, if athletes test negative one day and positive the next day, then they can be quarantined before they become contagious — usually 48 hours after contracting the virus.
College football programs simply can’t afford this daily testing. You figure there are 200 players, coaches and support staff on each college football team. Can you imagine the enormous expense of all those people being tested every single day at $140 a pop? If my math is right, you’d be looking at well over $2 million per program just for COVID-19 testing.
Which means college football, for the most part, is simply rolling the dice. We really don’t know how frequently each individual program is testing its players— at least until the season begins. That’s when most conferences will begin testing players twice a week — or so they say.
FSU got itself into trouble earlier this week when athletics director David Coburn said during a roundtable discussion with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that the school was doing weekly testing. This apparently was untrue, according to some of the players. Two wide receivers — Warren Thompson and D.J. Matthews —– both tweeted out references to “lies” being told by FSU’s leadership.
Tweeted Cindy Rewis, who is the guardian of star wide receiver Tamorrion Terry: “We need answers and we want the truth! … As parents and family members we deserve to know our kids are safe! Weekly testing has not taken place and many players have tested + and yet told to remain silent! Silent NO MORE!”
Translation: It’s time for FSU and every other school in every other conference that is choosing to play football this fall to be honest and transparent about their COVID-19 testing numbers and protocol. A friendly reminder to athletic programs at Florida State, Florida, UCF, et al: You are taxpayer-funded public institutions. We are in the midst of
public health crisis. Conclusion: You should make your testing numbers public.
College athletic programs often hide behind the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which prohibits doctors and other public entities (like universities) from sharing an individual’s medical records. However HIPAA doesn’t mean universities can’t share COVID-19 testing numbers as long as they don’t release names or identify individual players who have been infected. If other programs in other states are releasing their numbers then why can’t we?
As somebody wise once said, “Nothing so diminishes democracy as secrecy.”
I may be in the minority and I’m sort of ashamed to admit it, but I do believe that most college administrators and coaches are ethical and honest when it comes to following the rules, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need transparency.
As we’ve seen in the past, there are those in college football who will stop at nothing to get a competitive advantage. If we’ve seen universities who buried drug tests, sexual-assault allegations and covered up for Jerry Sandusky, then should we trust them when it comes to COVID-19 testing?
There are obviously some Florida State players who don’t — and I can’t say that I blame them.
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for the ACC, the SEC, the Big 12, the American Athletic Conference, etc. at least attempting to play football this fall, but it is obviously a dicey proposition.
Hopefully, it all works out, but you can’t help but wonder and worry if colleges have the resources to make it work.
Administrators and coaches at FSU and elsewhere say they want to make their players as safe as possible, but doesn’t that come with an addendum?
Aren’t they really saying that they want to make their players as safe as financially possible?