College football coaches face own COVID risks
North Carolina football coach Mack Brown has been walking three miles a day, researching the best foods to add to his diet and trying out a variety of masks for comfort and safety to further insulate himself from COVID-19, a task of heightened importance after the Tar Heels placed voluntary workouts on hiatus following a spate of positive tests.
“As the leader of this program, it’s my responsibility to take care of myself,” Brown said, “because they don’t need me getting sick.”
With his wife at a higher risk for complications from COVID19, Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson will spend the season away from his family. So will Penn State coach James Franklin, whose daughter has sickle cell anemia.
Since the spring, most Bowl Subdivision coaches have posted videos or statements online stressing the importance of wearing masks amid the coronavirus pandemic. These calls have taken on a new urgency within the past two weeks as programs and coaches tie steps such as mask wearing to the fate of the upcoming season.
“I want to make sure the staff is OK,” said Boston College coach Jeff Hafley. “When they go home to their families, I want to make sure that their families are OK. I want to set the standard that we’re going to do everything that we believe we can do to stay healthy.”
Coronavirus carries significant risk for older head coaches, who continue to lead a substantial portion of the 130-team FBS. Eighteen head coaches are over 60, led by Ohio’s Frank Solich, 75, the oldest in the FBS. In all, 38 head coaches are 55 or older.
“I’m in that experienced age group that they talk about,” said Brown, 68. “I’m one of those that’s going way beyond what a risk would be to try and make sure that I’m safe as possible.”
Eight out of 10 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the U.S. have come in adults 65 or older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The two highest-risk scenarios for older adults, per the CDC, are medium or large inperson gatherings where it might be difficult to maintain social distancing.
“I think it’s an area of extreme concern,” said Dr. Jon McCullers, senior associate dean for clinical affairs for the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. “We see the complication rate and the mortality rate rise steeply starting at 55 years of age, and then every decade after that it gets higher and higher. So the older the coach, the more likely they are to have severe outcomes if they were to contract COVID.”
The season itself remains in doubt. Two of the Power Five leagues, the Big Ten and Pac-12, already announced plans to play conference-only schedules. Several programs, including Ohio State, have suspended workouts amid an uncomfortable rise in positive tests for the coronavirus. On Thursday, the NCAA issued guidelines for practice and competition that highlighted how the national surge in confirmed cases of COVID-19 might impact both.
And for FBS head coaches, the optimism that joined the resumption of team activities in June has been colored by an ongoing dilemma.
How do these coaches ensure their own health and safety while handling the day-today task of orchestrating well over 100 players, assistant coaches and support staffers?
“We’ve had those discussions,” San Diego State coach Brady Hoke said. “Obviously, there is that concern that we stay healthy and that we keep everyone healthy.”
Based on procedures set in place by the NCAA, many programs have been able to hold eight hours a week of mandatory team activities, including film study and weight training. Beginning this week, teams can devote up to 20 hours a week on mandatory activities. (The Big Ten and Pac-12 have said that all activities will remain voluntary.)
Since the start of June, the lack of compulsory workouts and the ability to conduct team-wide and positional meetings virtually have allowed head coaches to maintain physical distance within football facilities – and in-person meetings have been pushed into larger spaces, with programs moving staff gatherings typically held in small conference rooms into auditoriums built to hold entire rosters.
“We’ve said from the very beginning that we wanted to be really proactive and make sure our guys were doing what we needed them to do,” said SMU coach Sonny Dykes. “It starts with me and carries over to our coaches and then to our players.”
For coaches over 55, the standard risk of transmission is compounded by the daily interactions with athletes who are not living in a sanitized bubble like players in the NBA and could continue to participate in workouts while being asymptomatic for COVID-19.
Another two factors may increase the odds that the virus seeps into locker rooms and football facilities later this summer. One is the inability for the U.S. to stem the current spike in positive cases, which has seen the number of daily cases more than double since late June. And keeping players coronavirus-free may become even more difficult on campuses where entire student bodies return to campuses.
“I’ve read enough where if I wear my mask and I’m around people wearing their masks, and if I keep my social distancing and if I clean my hands, which I do about 30, 40 times a day, and if we keep the surfaces around us clean, then there’s very little chance that we’ll get the virus,” Brown said.
At a minimum, creating a safe environment would demand that coaches wear masks and make a permanent commitment to social distancing – at the most drastic end of the spectrum, McCullers said, some coaches could avoid the sidelines altogether during games as a way to avoid being in direct proximity with players.
Maintaining that distance through the rest of July and into August would run contrary to the typically hands-on climate of preseason preparations.
“I think you can put a lot of protections in place for coaches. I think they’ll do some of that in terms of masking and trying to maintain some social distance,” McCullers said.
“But these are college students, and they’re going to have the disease because they’re not going to be in a bubble like the NBA is doing right now. There’s going to be disease there.”