SI.com’s Ross Dellenger has a draft of the medical document the Power 5 conferences have prepared to add uniformity to virus testing protocols and response procedures. I’ve read his piece and all I can think is that it’s going to be very tough for a school to play football uninterrupted this year.
- College teams will be required to test football players within 72 hours of games using the standard PCR test.
- Those who test positive must isolate for at least 10 days from their onset of symptoms/positive test and until they’ve gone at least three days without symptoms.
- Those found to have had “high risk” contact with people who have tested positive will quarantine for 14 days. This 14-day quarantine is mandatory. Even if those quarantined test negative for the virus, they must still complete the 14 days without competition.
That’s not even the toughest part. This is:
The document details several conditions that would result in a school discontinuing competition and/or complete seasons: 1) lack of ability to isolate new positive cases or quarantine high-contact risk cases on campus; 2) inability to perform weekly testing; 3) campus-wide or local community test rates that are considered unsafe by local public health officials; 4) inability to perform adequate contact tracing; 5) local public health officials state that there is an inability for the hospital infrastructure to accommodate a surge in COVID-related hospitalizations.
“Nos. 3 and 5 are a great concern for athletic administrators.” No shit, Sherlock.
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Contact tracing is what will sink this whole thing about conducting a large gathering. No amount of PPE, masking, social distancing, or quarantining will change that. North Point Community Church announced this week that in-person services will not restart until 2021. The responsibility for and difficulty in contact tracing was one of two reasons given for not reopening in August as originally planned (the hoops to jump through and those hoops’ impact on the experience was the other).
No concert promoter, athletic league, theater, or other entertainment venue is going to be able to deal with that.
I’m not saying whether that’s right or wrong … it just is.
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Agreed, ee. Contact tracing is simply impossible on a 100+ man football team at a school with thousands and thousands without other drastic measures and personal responsibility on the part of the athletes.
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Teams will need to isolate their players.
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also, they probably are ok with some infections now, but will tighten up when they’re 14 days from a game.
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Which will be impossible at UGA because we are required to have in-person classes.
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I know many of the classes have online options especially for core requirements. I assume those courses’ capacities can grow to allow especially the freshmen and sophomores to be able to enroll in as many of their hours online as possible.
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At this point, only if they need an ADA accommodation. Yes, there are online sections of common courses but not every course has an online option and it would be impossible to assemble an even mostly-online schedule for every guy on the team.
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Milton, I still think the powers that be are going to try to play this year. They can use contact tracing as the excuse to limit or eliminate fan participation. I can see Kirby bringing his team into a meeting after the late July SEC meeting and stating the following if you want to play this season:
1) Everyone is moving into one of East Campus Village dormitories – no players can live off campus for the fall semester … no exceptions.
2) Players will take all classes online for the fall semester – your schedules have already been changed or your instructors have been notified you will be participating remotely … once again, no exceptions.
3) No one will be allowed to go downtown or to an off-campus apartment during the fall semester … no exceptions.
4) No one can ride with or drive someone outside the team/staff for the fall semester.
5) You can be in the following places during fall semester – your sequestered dormitory, an approved AA shuttle, your vehicle, the academic support building, or the football facilities within the Butts-Mehre Building and the attached practice fields.
6) You will be allowed to interact with your families on game days but only in an appropriately distanced environment.
If you violate any of those rules, you must notify Ron Courson’s staff and be subject to testing before you can reenter the bubble.
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Oh I still think that they’ll try as well. And I agree with your points and have thought similarly for weeks that the only way to make it work is create an environment akin to the NBA bubble or MLS bubble. In some respects, I think that Power 5 football has an advantage over the NFL if they can do like you point to. The NFL, unlike a bubble dorm in Athens for example, has players that are going to go home to families.
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I just don’t know how they create a bubble on a campus as large as UGA. They can’t build a temporary fence around one of the dorms like they’ve done at Disney for the NBA players. Are 100+ 18-21 year old alpha males going to comply with the mandates or will they try to skirt the rules?
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I think that what you and I agree on is that the bubble concept is the only way to make a season happen. The logistics can even probably be overcome. The enormous personal responsibility, selflessness, and dedication as to protocols for four or five months is the hurdle that may be a bridge too far.
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I want football as much as the next guy. But if it means turning college kids into prisoners, I’ll pass. They don’t owe me anything.
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I totally agree!
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1) Can’t have all athletic dorms (per NCAA; I believe the ECV buildings are 90% athlete and 10% regular student). You’d have to displace a lot of regular and non-football student athletes to pull that off. Won’t happen.
2) As mentioned above, this is not only logistically impossible but opens up all sorts of impropriety issues. Especially for guys in Engineering and upper level coursework where in-person class is crucial or required for the type of work they are doing.
3) This one is most likely to be implemented but enforcing it will be a bitch. Team leadership and players policing themselves would be critical.
4) Same as above.
5) Same as above.
6) Yeah. Good luck with that.
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I know. That’s why it’s practically impossible to set up a structure that they are going to be able to play.
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The church announcement is reasonable in that there is a large elderly population at risk. This is certainly not the case in college football. We need to recognize that young, healthy youth and adults are at an extremely low risk of serious outcomes from Covid. Each parent and participant should play or not play of their own accord this season of course. CDC and pediatric studies from Europe indicate that kids should be in school, and that they pose a minimal risk to themselves. The risk of transmission from child to adult was negligible as well. It stands to reason that this would be true for young adults a few years older than 18.
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North Point is not a large elderly population, but the message is the same.
It’s all about the spread at this point.
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Get ready to watch reruns of great Bulldog victories of the Richt era all fucking fall because of a virus that will harm not one single college football player. There is no option but to hide in a cave.
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You first, buddy.
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Bold & Strong interweb words…
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Contact tracing is impossible unless overall virus levels are very low in the community. For . . . some reason(s) (trying not to wade into playpen territory) . . . there’s nearly nowhere in the US where we have gotten the virus level that low.
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Southern Utah. Went hiking there this summer. Town where I stayed had one case as of about a month ago.
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That sounds very nice
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Beautiful country. I can’t wait to go back.
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I would imagine that by late next year, everyone in that area will have been exposed to covid. To think that humans can actually just avoid coming into contact with a ubiquitous virus is simply unlikely, whether because of the prevalence of said virus, or human nature and our need to interact. We can not distance ourselves enough or isolate the virus enough to eliminate the likelyhood of being in close contact with someone carrying it.
“Life will find a way, it always does.”
Ian Malcolm….a brilliant made up human being. I trust his insight as much as most any of the ‘experts’ at this point.
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Well michael Crichton is amazing
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I’m sure of it Tlk. I was reading about the 1918 pandemic a while back. Before it was over, that virus had caused sickness and death every place on earth where humans lived. Even on pacific islands which were a thousand miles from the nearest land. Also above the article circle. Literally everywhere. That was before air travel. It really boggles the mind.
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Arctic circle
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I would imagine that by late next year, everyone in that area will have been exposed to covid. To think that humans can actually just avoid coming into contact with a ubiquitous virus is simply unlikely, whether because of the prevalence of said virus, or human nature and our need to interact. We can not distance ourselves enough or isolate the virus enough to eliminate the likelyhood of being in close contact with someone carrying it.
“Life will find a way, it always does.”
Ian Malcolm, zjurassic Park. I trust his insight as much as most any of the ‘experts’ at this point.
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Sorry about the double post.
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Seems to me that depth, especially at QB, is going to be very important.
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I am commenting for the 2nd time on this topic and only to provide a link that might be interesting to some: https://www.covid-georgia.com/
That link is from a private citizen who has taken the data from the Georgia Dept of Health and analyzed it to present data that is actual consumable to the average citizen. Updated daily and has detailed graphs and data point that should be illuminating.
The fact that a private citizen did this highlights our state government in this area is either 1) incompetent, 2) intentionally making the published data hard to discern or, 3) both.
Regarding the data itself, draw — or confirm — your own conclusions.
ED
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Great site. Thanks for posting.
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Thanks for sharing. Good stuff.
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https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report
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Another good site https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
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So much grey area. For instance, who on earth makes the call whether a school’s contact tracing is “adequate” enough?
NEWS FLASH FOR POWER 5 AND NCAA
If your protocols on implementing a testing regime for this Fall aren’t laid out in a document at least 200 pages long, you’re not doing it right.
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A player testing positive (10 day wait) may return to practice before his roommate (or rest of his position group?) that he potentially infected (14 day isolation).
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Correct.
Because that is a sound scientific principle.
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Lol.
Cancel the season already.
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No matter how bad the State of Georgia looks the poor ole Gators are screwed big time. Florida can’t get the correct results from labs They just picked up on the fact that some of the labs doing the tests were reporting 100% positive infections. Panic time in Tallahassee but guess what those labs were not reporting the negative test results but only the positive test results. If the Gators and FSU can’t play the U as a private school in ground zero of this Sh*t show don’t have a chance. Reruns for the win guys and girls.
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Theres no football
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I don’t want to go to playpen territory, but all of this has pointed in this direction for some time. “Flatten the curve” went to “slow the spread,” which will now go to “only until we have a vaccine.”
I’m bummed because I’m likely losing 3 of my passions for the foreseeable future … Georgia football, going to The Masters, and Disney/Universal travel. I guess my golf game and spending time at home will have to suffice.
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There’s just too many moving parts, it’s just too much of a mess, the PR could be a nightmare, no unified direction. Theyre just scrambling for hope something can work out to get some TV money. I still think my recommendation is the best, lol, Play just a few exhibition games. If even that can happen. I’m actually expecting the pac 10 to completely cancel soon and be the first
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and I want to fish in that blue water.
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it’s pretty crowded at my beach https://sowal.com/webcam/seagrove-beachcam-walton-dunes
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Considering the news out of Clarke county hospitals, #5 looks very worrying if the number of infections doesn’t go down drastically.
Contact tracing is a hurdle too, but if Kirby huddles up with some public health SMEs, there’s a simple message to the team: make sure you can account for whoever you hang out with outside of practice, and if you want to play — no bars, and no dine-in restaurants.) If the NCAA would let the AA pay for grocery delivery that’d help even more, but I can’t imagine that happening.
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They still have special lady friends and other friends and family.
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Coaches and schools have been gaming tests for years, I’m sure they can work around this.
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Good point. With a little good old American ingenuity and know how, anything is possible.
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Field expediency.
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Can we put Jim Harrick, Jr. in charge of Covid testing?
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let us hope jimmy williamson is not now a public health official. we would never play again.
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Surprised this doesn’t give the option of 2 consecutive negative tests as a way to clear quarantine like the NBA is doing. Guess they don’t feel like drawing more attention to haves and have nots if the P5 world.
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Too many false negatives.
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Circle jerk comes to mind.
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For What it’s Worth:
No need for COVID testing. We are talking about 18-22 year old males. Just a simple not necessary example of testosterone will tell you THIS WILL NOT WORK !
Yup they are there for football or English, maybe Journalism. If my mind still serves me correctly these men will be not be denied female companionship and that’s after 36 years and a B.S. and M.A. degree. Lots of those mornings are still vivid as yesterday. What is my purpose here? I found the dorm and what classes do I have or is it Saturday ? Remember ?
Sometimes rational thinking of our minds does not enter the male mind at 18-22 years of age. Perhaps this has changed if so please let me know.
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I don’t see how the community spread issue doesn’t catch them all out. I teach at a college in the south and we’re scheduled to bring all 12K+ students back to campus… BUT 3 weeks before that our K-12 system starts back nearly ‘as normal’. I think that combination of the two tanks our community which like much of the south is just barely holding their head above water on this issue. So many folks out ignoring the recommendations to slow the spread.
Our college was mostly online this summer but did let a few short second session summer classes hold on campus classes. They started July 6. I’m guessing 300 students at most (lab sciences mostly I think.) Well by day 6 I’m hearing of 3 positive students… all in 2 classes on the same floor of the biology building. In the meantime I’m hearing 10 positive results among our football team. If those few students and athletes had that kind of response in 1 week (and those are only the ones I heard of anecdotally – we’re apparently not making anything public anymore) I can’t imagine what mid-Sept looks like locally.
I know the younger kids are thought to be nearly immune to getting sick and even to carrying the virus around. Fine… but the 2400 student HS will operate much closer to adults wrt to spread – and for sure for the 300+ adults who work in the building. And I’ve been in there (we’ve got one daughter there)… the students are literally shoulder to shoulder in the hallways between classes.
I just don’t see this experiment of putting students back in classrooms lasting very long… unless the mask mandates (by corporate America; none in our town otherwise) help reduce the spread enough that we can limp along without rising hospitalizations, etc. In some ways it really is a grand experiment playing out right before our eyes with relatively quick results coming back… from a statistician’s standpoint, that’s fascinating… if you can ignore the enormous toll in lives. 😦
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Removing students from the classroom would be a good idea.
Permanently.
Eliminate faculty and staff. Eliminate infrastructure and maintenance. No need really for state departments of education or local administration. No need for bussing or cafeteria services.
Just one national uniform online education service.
It would save taxpayers billions. Teachers are non-essential.
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Eliminate faculty and staff? So, who is going to teach these courses? Using what curriculum? What about special needs children? Where is the infrastructure? Who builds it and maintains it? Who pays for the internet access and computers in the home? How do you protect the data being generated? What about the tens of millions of children who don’t get proper nutrition if they don’t go to school? And that’s just the first couple of things that come to mind. There are lots more issues with doing school online nationally.
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Online lectures can be recorded once and shown over and over. The testing can be formatted just as any online test is.
Special needs children will be raised by their parents, just as they are during the shutdown of schools. Just as unspecial needs children are during the shutdown of schools.
The infrastructure will not really be required, at least in comparison to the current condition. It will largely be comprised a massive server farm.
The government will provide Internet and electronic devices, which will be a fraction of the cost per pupil compared to what is being paid presently.
The data that is collected will be protected by the same federal security protocols that protect your information at the IRS, SSA or any other federal agency.
Feeding the children will be the job of parents.
Those are the answers to your first set of questions.
If you have more I’m happy to answer.
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Good luck getting PCR test results back within 72 hours. That’s not possible at the current time with any consistency.
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What happens when a QB tests positive and contaminates all the others in the QB room? Including the OC/QB coach?
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We pull out the Triple Option playbook?
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This is like trying to watch NASCAR under rain delay. They won’t just admit that the damn race is not going to happen so you can move on with your day. They keep you hanging on. I’m about ready to say to hell with it and go outside to work in the yards!
Unless we simply become more tolerant of assumed risk, there is not going to be football. What really pisses me off is that a lot of people are real happy about it.
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