The SEC's decision to allow voluntary workouts on campus is a key step, but there's still a long way to go
On Friday, we got 1 step closer to college football in 2020. That’s a fantastic thing.
The SEC announced Friday that following a vote from university presidents, it’ll allow voluntary in-person activities on campus beginning on June 8. The conference will lift its suspension of all team activities, which ran through May 31. It’ll be up to each university to decide when they’ll begin their on-campus training programs.
It’s easy to read that and think that the decision means that we’re going to be back to business as usual soon. In a perfect world, yes, that would be the case. However, in this world — the one in which there’s still a pandemic going on that’s claimed over 95,000 lives in the U.S. — there are still major challenges left to navigate when and what college athletics are going to look like in 2020.
According to a release from the SEC, “under plans developed by each university and consistent with state and local health directives, certain activities will be permitted based on the ability to participate in controlled and safe environments, while also maintaining recommended social distancing measures.”
To be clear, this won’t include coaches. Like all June workouts, only strength and conditioning coaches will be permitted. That’s not anything new.
What is new are the restrictions that’ll be put in place. There are plenty:
- Enhanced education of all team members on health and wellness best practices, including but not limited to preventing the spread of COVID-19
- A 3-stage screening process that involves screening before student-athletes arrive on campus, within 72 hours of entering athletics facilities and on a daily basis upon resumption of athletics activities
- Testing of symptomatic team members (including all student-athletes, coaches, team support and other appropriate individuals)
- Immediate isolation of team members who are under investigation or diagnosed with COVID-19 followed by contact tracing, following CDC and local public health guidelines
- A transition period that allows student-athletes to gradually adapt to full training and sport activity following a period of inactivity
That’s all well and good, but there are a few things there that the league will have to deal with.
For example, what’s holding the universities back from testing asymptomatic team members? Money? That’s possible. Mizzou athletic director Jim Sterk was told that each test costs $65. Still, coming from the conference that has 4-win teams like South Carolina putting up $50 million facilities, that’s a surprising cost-cutting measure to take. Hopefully these are just minimum requirements and programs will show initiative to test all players, not just the symptomatic ones. As we know from athletes like Kevin Durant, one can be asymptomatic and still test positive.
Speaking of that, what happens to the rest of the team if a player does test positive? We know that the player would be isolation that follows the current CDC guidelines (per the release), but how would impact a team’s ability to practice or play? SEC commissioner Greg Sankey went on “Get Up” on Friday and admitted that he’s still working on a solution for that through communication with professional leagues.
What kind of transparency would be enforced in a sport that has to pull teeth just to get coaches to release a 2-deep depth chart? We don’t know.
And from a liability standpoint, it makes sense why these are being called “voluntary” in-person activities. One would assume that rids the conference of liability in the event that a player or several players test positive for the virus and suffer severe side effects.
But what about when workouts are no longer voluntary? Late July is approaching rapidly. Soon, after what’s essentially a trial run of voluntary workouts, the decision-makers will have to decide how to operate in a non-voluntary sense, and also what isolation would look like with students back on campus.
Here’s the good news. SEC coaches and administrators are absolutely taking this seriously. Several released statements following Friday’s news. Will Muschamp said that he’d be ready to return his team to action as soon as possible while adhering to guidelines not to allow meetings of more than 12 people in the team’s facility at the same time. Nick Saban, meanwhile, came out with a fully-masked PSA on Thursday:
A special message from Coach Saban, Big AL and Jeff Allen!#InThisTogether #RollTide pic.twitter.com/wLk8Du9R0V
— Alabama Football (@AlabamaFTBL) May 21, 2020
Coaches in masks will just be part of the new normal in the sport during these voluntary workouts and beyond. Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger outlined even more of those changes that could be coming at college football programs across the country:
“Coaches and staff members in masks and gloves. Temperature tests at the front door. Hand sanitizing stations around every corner. Weight room squat racks 20 feet apart. Stairwells with one-way movement, a set for going up and another for going down. Elevators with a maximum occupancy of two. Nutrition stations offering only packaged snacks.”
Dellenger reported that we could even see outdoor weight rooms, as well. That could depend on the size of each school’s weight room.
How sustainable is that? And will that prompt the NCAA to relax its restrictions on in-person practices during the season if workout stations are operating to maximize safety over efficiency? Who knows.
What we do know is that there’s been at least some flexibility by the parties involved. The goal is obviously still to have a season. If you’re reading this column or consuming any college football content, you’re probably of that opinion. Hearing immediate reactions from the majority of the SEC that they’ll indeed be back on campus for voluntary workouts confirmed that notion (in case there was any doubt).
As of right now, all required in-person activities remain suspended through July 31. That’s roughly 9 weeks from Friday’s announcement. A decision on what the 2020 season will look like figures to come much earlier than that date.
Gus Malzahn correctly called Friday’s vote “an important first step.” Those last 2 words carry some major significance. “First” is accurate after what’s felt like 2 months of nothing but bad news. “Step” makes sense because announcing voluntary workouts is not the end-all, be-all to make this thing work in 2020. Several steps await in the coming weeks and months.
Here’s hoping all of those steps are forward.
I hope they take it one game at a time or one step at a time, whichever comes first.
In the U.S.’s litigious society this is a lawsuit waiting to happen…and so it’s should be with the rush to put these players in harm’s way because of the subpar testing procedures they’ll be using…College sports isn’t ready yet, the first athlete that tests positive and dies, their families will sue their socks off, because these voluntary workout are actually not voluntary…watch and see!!!
****aren’t ready yet****
And, “…so it should be….”
A majority of the people dying from COVID are 60 something boomers and retirees.
I highly doubt a young athlete in the prime of their life would contract let alone succumb to COVID.
well you aren’t an expert and clearly don’t understand the situation, so let’s listen to people who are a bit better informed.
What doesn’t he understand?
Just because your demographic isn’t at elevated risk for death from covid-19 doesn’t mean that your actions can’t affect the lives of those who are at greater risk.
scenario 1: everyone under 60 w/o pre-existing conditions goes back to normal tomorrow, everyone else continues sheltering in place
scenario 2: everyone continues doing what we’re doing now
many more people die under scenario 1 than under scenario 2. regardless of your personal risk, what you choose to do has a significant impact on the lives of others.
and this doesn’t even get to the fact that there are still unknowns about the disease, some athletes have underlying conditions that elevate their risk, there’s more of a spectrum of outcomes than just the false, implied binary of ‘dead’ or ‘unaffected,’ etc. so that’s just some of what appears to be lacking from the understanding presented above.
OK, but you put a lot of words in his mouth. Both of his statements are true.
@JTF:
I’m sorry, but both of his statements are NOT true. The OP stated that “I highly doubt a young athlete in the prime of their life would contract let alone succumb to COVID.”
This statement is almost exactly halfway false. A young athlete is not much more or less likely to contract COVID than my grandma, at least if you put them in the same environment. It’s a novel virus, meaning no one, including those with healthy immune systems, have immunity. Let me repeat YOUNG PEOPLE ARE NOT IMMUNE.
Now the latter half that it’s unlikely that 18-22 YO football players are going to die from this? Writ large, this is an accurate statement. Doubtless some with pre-existing conditions will struggle, perhaps even a few will become hospitalized and die. But do I think vast numbers of CFB players are going to die from this? No, of course I do not. But here’s the deal :they can still spread it. To trainers, to coaches, to their girlfriends, to their family. Even if they’re not dying, they’re spreading. You can’t sequester 70,000 (that’s approximately how many NCAA football players there are) unpaid athletes for an entire offseason and season. Can’t be done. So even if you’re not directly killing athletes, you might well be killing their coach or their athletic trainer or their mom or the store clerk they visit or whoever else they may spread it to. We have to think in these terms. It’s not just “YOUNG PEOPLE DONT DIE FROM THIS, ITS ALL FINE, PAWWWLLLL”. That’s ridiculously reductive reasoning that does not take into account anywhere near the complexity this situation requires.
I will grant the point about catching the virus.
Other than that, he’s right.
Fair enough. I guess it’s just difficult for me to see how people are making those kinds of mistakes at this stage. We’ve understood that COVID could infect young people since late February or early March. That information is out there. Basically, in late May 2020 you are posting on a message board that you don’t think young people could contract COVID, you’re either being willfully ignorant or lying. I was forgiving of not understanding the basic tenants of an emerging national crisis in, say, March. Now? 100,000 people have died. Maybe go right ahead and gain a base-level of understanding of what is going on before sounding off.
Pardon me. I knew all ages were subject to catch the virus.
I missed that part of his comment and was focused on the two main components. One, most deaths are elderly and young healthy folks rarely do.
YOu understand that age helps only in mitigating outcomes, not contracting the virus, right? There is no relationship whatsoever between age and susceptibility to contracting and spreading the virus to other people.
i’m not sure if people can’t see sense or just refuse to.
maybe they just don’t know/care about anyone in those groups and they are too selfish to care if it doesn’t affect them? i want to give them the benefit of the doubt but many people seem to be refusing it.
Studies have not found that to be correct. In China, only 8% of infected people are in their 20’s while teens only make up 1.2% of the cases. There isn’t a whole lot of data out there, but it doesn’t support your claim that everyone’s susceptibility is the same.
Let’s talk about deaths here. Because football or not, we are never going to make college campuses safe from catching contagious diseases and we can name numerous bugs on college campuses that are more concerning than Covid 19.
The facts are that only about a dozen young men in the USA age 18 thru 24 have died from covid 19 since we started testing. ALL of them had health challenges more concerning than covid 19.
I know that and you know that…But….”Do they know that?” For $800 Alex please.
It’s definitely a rush. And the wording is extremely strategic as well. They will be “screening” every player yet “testing” only symptomatic ones. Wtf is this screening supposed to consist of? This is a disaster waiting to happen. You can’t screen Covid and find it, you only find it by testing yet they’re own wording here clearly states they have no intention of testing everyone.
my guess is “screening” is temperature checks. if that’s true, then any asymptomatic people (quite possible) would not be caught and could then spread it. so hopefully screening means testing and they just were inconsistent or mistaken with their terms
Yep spot on, screening doesn’t confirm anything. I also highly doubt they were just mistaken with their terms. It’s pretty clear they were careful with saying who and who wont specifically get tested. They need to test everyone right off the bat, either do it right from the beginning or don’t do it at all until they can do it right.
We had our ‘weight room’ outside in junior high school. Just saying.
I’m not outright opposed to players returning soon, if done right, but the SEC, and many of its member institutions, including my alma mater (Missouri) are making at least one grave error in their plan to return.
This plan does not require testing of all athletes. I know at Missouri, they’re not even planning on testing asymptomatic athletes at all. Guess what? The CDC estimates the asymptomatic rate of COVID-19 infections is 35%. So Missouri and other schools are just immediately acknowledging that they are willing to let at least 35% of the cases slip through undetected. Asymptomatic players can still transmit the infection-so it is nearly certain that we will see them spreading the virus.
They need to test everyone. I understand the test are not expensive. But the member schools that cannot afford to test everyone should not compete in the 2020 football season. Even if it’s my school. Doing so is a potentially catastrophic error in judgement in my view.
you forgot that feelings are now apparently more important than facts and logic
Covid 19 is not even the worst Coronavirus, much less the worst disease out there going untested. And why did you choose a misleading and not well supported statistic. Far better supported is the statistic that shows that 60x as many people have recovered from C-19 as nasal tests are showing. That is proven by random blood tests for antibodies. Political leaders around the world want to stay in power so they don’t want any freedoms out there that their opponents can use against them. The solution is term limits for all lawmakers, gov.s and pres.s, and even judges. Sure test for as many reasons as needed, but the ideas of washing hands, keeping safe distance, are more important. Yes football is a contact sport, but it is a voluntary activity. College educations are still affordable without scholarships in some venues. College educations have always had some risks associated with them.
The solution to a pandemic is…term limits? Gracious. That’s even worse than what Trump is saying.