Another pandemic season — except this one’s different
The Wild West nature of the upcoming, pandemic-challenged college football season can be illustrated in part by 160 miles of Texas highway that connects the trendy college city of Austin with the bustling metropolis of Houston.
At one end lies the University of Texas, where more than 100,000 fans will pack Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium to cheer the Longhorns this fall. Many, along with some players and coaches, are likely to be unvaccinated after Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order prohibiting vaccine requirements for any organization that receives state funding.
At the other end of that highway is Rice University, where 40,000-plus hope to see their Owls turn things around this fall. And because it is a private research university, Abbott’s executive order does not apply, and vaccine requirements put in place by the school mean just about everybody who arrives will get in only if they have received their COVID-19 shots.
That’s just two of the 130 schools that will be playing Division I football this fall.
Each will have vaccination plans shaped by governors and legislatures, medical officials and university leaders, and they are likely to change from week to week. Politics and policy are certain to collide as red states and blue states, often with schools playing in the same conference, attempt to make it through an entire season without an outbreak.
“Inevitably,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said, “we’re all just trying to protect one another.”
There are more than 2,500 schools across the country with varying COVID-19 mitigation policies, according to the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College, which has been tracking higher education responses to the pandemic. Nearly a quarter of them — hundreds of schools such as Michigan and Notre Dame — required students arriving this summer and fall to be vaccinated, a number that is certain to increase after the FDA’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine this week.
Now one of the biggest roadblocks to requiring the vaccine — its emergency authorization — has become a moot point.
“I think six or seven states, by gubernatorial degree or statelegislative decrees, could not do it,” explained Chris Marsicano, a Davidson professor who specializes in education policy, “and Ohio, Arizona and Texas are among the most high-profile of them.”
At places where the vaccine is not required, such as Kansas State, players who have not received the shot are subject to rigorous COVID-19 control plans. They include regular testing, the wearing of masks in all public areas and, quite often, the inability to join teammates for meals and other out-ofpractice activities.
“I know we’re over 80% now,” K-State head coach Chris Klieman said midway through preseason camp. “We had a handful the last week of July, the first week of August, that were able to get their first shot. So we’re not out of the woods. But nobody is.”
In Mississippi, where vaccination rates are among the lowest in the nation, Mississippi head coach Lane Kiffin raised eyebrows last month with the news that his entire team had been vaccinated. That wasn’t the case at the start of the summer program, Kiffin said, but players took it upon themselves to encourage each other to get their shots.
“You’re coming in, you’re near these guys, you’re impacting people’s ability to play the games on certain weekends and getting shut down,” he said. “This is not a normal job where you can just stay at home and Zoom in on Saturday.”
More than 100 games were canceled or postponed in major college football last season, even though most schools played truncated or conference-only schedules. Some were made up with just a few days’ notice, others bounced around the schedule like a ping-pong ball. Coaches often were left wondering whom they would play — not to mention when or if at all — as they dealt with outbreaks.
At least that won’t be a problem this season. Every Power Five conference has indicated any team unable to play a game because of COVID-19 issues will be forced to forfeit. The SEC has even considered financial penalties for teams that have issues, pointing out that a massive amount of television money would be jeopardized by canceled games.
“Frankly, anyone not getting vaccinated is taking unnecessary and unwarranted risks,” Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. “It’s shortsighted to not get vaccinated.”