The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Another year starting in a pandemic
College football is set to start on time this season, despite the recent rise of COVID-19 cases in the United States, but this time, with fans in the stands.
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 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 that shows up 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 very same conference, attempt to make it through an entire season without an outbreak.
“Inevitably,” Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian acknowledged, “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 fall to be vaccinated, a number 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 state legislative 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-of-practice activities.
“I know we’re over 80% now,” Wildcats coach Chris Klieman said midway through fall 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. I wish we could say we’re done with this but we’re not.”
In Mississippi, where vaccination rates are among the lowest in the nation, Rebels 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.”
Alabama coach Nick Saban said his team was closing in on 90% vaccination rates, the byproduct of a robust education effort and natural peer pressure. The same at SEC-rival Georgia, where coach Kirby Smart said “we feel really comfortable where we are” at the start of fall practice.
“My goal is always to be 100%,” Smart said. “I think it’s the safest for our players.”
The NCAA doesn’t require its 1,100 member schools with some 450,000 athletes in dozens of sports to follow a one-size-fits-all COVID-19 policy. Instead, the beleaguered governing body issued a set of recommendations for testing, quarantining and isolation that were designed to fit within a framework of widely varying state mandates.