Athlete-only dorms could be NCAA’s answer to pandemic

The University of Alabama’s Bryant Hall wasn’t the first residence hall constructed solely for the use of college athletes, but to hear Sports Illustrated tell it upon its opening in 1963, it was certainly among the swankiest. Housing 100 football players, 20 basketball players, six baseball players and four track athletes plus golfers, tennis players and swimmers “if they’re winners,” according to a Crimson Tide publicist, the dorm featured a library, two study rooms, a recreation room, a TV room with a 23-inch color television set, and two fulltime dietitians.

“Steak is served every night and twice on Saturday,” the unnamed SI scribe wrote.

Other schools, mainly in the South and Midwest, took note and built athlete-only residence halls of their own until the NCAA stepped in and banned the practice in the 1990s, saying the dorms were a perk not given to the rest of the student body and that they built a divide between athletes and other students. But now, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, the NCAA and its schools could find themselves forced to undermine the longstanding rule if they want to get their seasons off the ground.

Four major universities announced major changes to in-person learning policies after outbreaks of the coronavirus occurred within the first week of classes. The

University of North Carolina on Monday announced it would halt in-person learning; Michigan State made the same decision a day later followed by NC State on Thursday. Also on Tuesday, Notre Dame suspended all undergraduate classes for two weeks. Michigan State will not play football until at least the spring after the Big Ten Conference decided this month to cancel fall sports competitions. But the other three schools, at least so far, are proceeding with getting ready for a fall football season.

For plans to play to move forward, NCAA teams might be forced to decide whether to follow the path of the NBA, WNBA, NHL and MLS in instituting a bubble for athletes in football and basketball, the two sports that generate millions in revenue for the schools and thus the ones that schools most need played amid the pandemic. And that would force the NCAA into a thorny issue it confronted more than two decades ago.

Athlete-only residence halls were constructed with varying degrees of luxury. Florida built Yon Hall right into the side of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, so its football players could live where they played. In 1978, Kentucky’s basketball players moved into a mansion — specifically built for the team — dubbed “the Lodge.” In the early 1990s, Mississippi football coach Billy Brewer and his wife liked the team’s residence hall so much that they simply moved into it themselves. But where schools saw a recruiting pitch, the NCAA saw trouble. Bud Wilkinson House, home of Oklahoma’s football team, was the site of a gang rape and an incident in which one Sooners player shot another over a cassette tape. In 1985, police went to Foster Hall at the University of Miami on seven separate occasions to arrest a Hurricanes football player. So in 1991, the NCAA announced that its schools had five years to do away with athlete-only dorms. Starting in 1996, all residence halls housing athletes had to be at least 51% filled with students who weren’t athletes.

Nearly a quarter-century later, the “51%” rule could come into play. Separating athletes from the general student population could trouble the NCAA, considering its long-standing struggle to minimize the differences between big-time college athletes and their traditional-student peers. Giving football and basketball players their own living space would, in essence, be an admission that such students require at least some special treatment.

Such an admission might be needed: Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in June that a bubble might be the only way for football to move forward this fall.

“Unless players are essentially in a bubble — insulated from the community and they are tested nearly every day — it would be very hard to see how football is able to be played this fall,” Fauci told CNN. “If there is a second wave, which is certainly a possibility and which would be complicated by the predictable flu season, football may not happen this year.”

An NCAA spokeswoman on Tuesday did not answer a question about whether the organization was considering a change to or suspension of the residence-hall rule, saying only that “NCAA leadership and membership committees are continuing to identify and work through the considerable issues related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.” But NCAA President Mark Emmert said last week that the bubble idea could be a viable option, specifically regarding the NCAA basketball tournament.

“Starting with 64 teams is tough. Thirty-two, OK, maybe that’s a manageable number. Sixteen, certainly manageable. But you’ve got to figure out those logistics,” Emmert said in an interview posted on the NCAA’s website. “There’s doubtlessly ways to make that work.”

A bubble for college football would be much more difficult to pull off with the traditional start of the regular season only weeks away. For comparison’s sake, the NBA’s owners approved their bubble plan on June 4 but did not actually begin playing games until July 31, and pro basketball has a centralized governance structure that college football lacks.

There’s also the matter of what the college football bubble would look like: Would teams from each conference gather in one city, like the NBA, or would teams sequester themselves on campus, leaving only to play games?

Such an isolation plan, whatever it might entail, might be the only option left for teams in the ACC, SEC and Big 12, the Power Five conferences that have decided to move forward with fall seasons. The perils of not doing so have been illustrated this week at North Carolina, Michigan State and Notre Dame.

As part of its pivot to online learning, UNC said it would work to lessen the population density in student housing, meaning the school’s football players might soon be among the few people living on campus (though the players have been given the option of moving off-campus).

In essence, the Tar Heels will be in a bubble, according to coach Mack Brown.

“Even with not going to classrooms, that helps us create a better seal around our program and a better bubble,” he said Tuesday. “The NBA model’s working. They’ve had very few distractions and that’s what we’re trying to do is make sure that our players and our staff understand that we’ve got three months here where we cannot go outside for social reasons or to eat or anything else if we want to have our season.”