It was late June, two days before a college football player left home for school and voluntary workouts, when he got a group text message from a teammate who also is his roommate.
He’d just found out he had tested positive for COVID-19.
Had the teammate not disclosed the news, the football player said, he might not have found another place to live while the teammate was infectious and in isolation.
The football coaches, medical staff and athletic director at the school never informed him his teammate had tested positive, said the football player, who spoke to USA TODAY on condition of anonymity and requested the name of the Division I school not be disclosed because he fears reprisal.
While college football players are routinely exposed to serious injury, this year many of them were exposed to COVID-19 more than two months before the general student body was scheduled to return to campus during the coronavirus pandemic. The football player who spoke to USA TODAY said he has sickle cell anemia and worries about research that indicates he and other Black people are at greater risk for getting infected.
You can probably predict the punchline.
The college football player who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the school for which he plays required him to sign a document before he could begin voluntary workouts. According to a copy of the document viewed by USA TODAY, it states in part that the signee understands he may be at higher risk for exposure to COVID-19 because playing football involves close contact with others.
Somebody needs to out these fuckers. Period.
Get The Picture 
Are schools allowed to share the medical results/conditions of one player to another player?
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So, it’s okay to tell coaches and ADs, but not the roommate?
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I’m sure they can state that a player or players have notified the school they have tested positive. And I suppose they can say its your roommate without naming names too.
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They don’t hesitate to list the flu on the injury report every week during the season.
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If the school is that worried about HIPPA compliance it could tell the unnamed player, “We cannot tell you why but you may not room with that guy now.”
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I brought up sickle cell as a worry about Covid and no one responded so I thought I was over reacting. Sorry to see that is not true. I hope that this forces schools to share info with the players. I am sure there is more then one school doing this.
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So I’m guessing that no one actually knows the answer to this question, including myself.
Obviously we understand that informing members of the athletic staff as to a player’s status pertaining to their ability to take part in activities would be different than dissemination that information to the public.
If this is Kirby Smart in this article, and we don’t know, because for all we know it could be, should we immediately jump to the conclusion that Kirby Smart is a bastard using children as guinea pigs?
Or do you think perhaps the issue is more legally complex and nuanced?
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Sickle Cell Anemia? Don’t think so. A significant number of people with sickle cell die before age 20. IIRC life expectancy is 40 – 60 years. Stressful exercise and dehydration are know to trigger a potentially fatal sickle crisis and should be avoided. He probably has sickle cell trait.
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It’s always impressive to watch a diagnosis unfold from someone who’s never met the party in interest.
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I’m not making a medical diagnosis based on history and a physical exam. I’m just saying if he has Sickle Cell Anemia he can’t play CFB. The same as a person who is a double amputee can’t play CFB.
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We’ve had at least one player with the sickle cell trait. If memory serves it was RB Michael Cooper.
Also this: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2716677-footballs-silent-killer-forces-players-and-teams-to-make-tough-choices
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Maybe not college football but you can play in the NFL … seems curious that he was able to make it the NFL without a college career.
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/8335923/pittsburgh-steelers-ryan-clark-play-denver
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Ryan Clark has Sickle Cell TRAIT. In my 9:16 post I said the player in question “probably has Sickle Cell TRAIT”. The post said he had Sickle Cell ANEMIA. They are two different things, hence the different names. Sickle Cell TRAIT is relatively benign.
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Here is an alternative hypothesis, the anonymous player doesn’t have sickle cell anemia or sickle cell trait because the player doesn’t exist. We know the “Anonymous player” is wrong about having sickle cell anemia because Gurkha is absolutely correct,that there are ZERO D-1 football players with sickle cell anemia. For purposes of my analysis it would be logical to assume no one knows their own health status better than that person. It follows that this “Anonymous player” is either stunningly ignorant to the point of putting his own life at risk(unlikely), the reporter is ignorant and does not understand there is a difference in the word trait and anemia (certainly possible) or ,my personal preference, like many of our anonymous sources in the last few years just doesn’t exit. This thread is just so typical, the twitterverse lies about what you said and than posts hyperlinks disproving what they said you said but NOT disproving what you actually said. Congrats Gurkha you win the twitterverse today…..You shut up Derek……for a minute.
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Thanks Wewoof. Your entire comment is spot on. I’ve taken care of sickle cell anemia patients and they are extremely knowledgeable about their health status. They have to be or they wouldn’t live very long. No sickle cell patient would confuse sickle cell anemia with sickle cell trait. I didn’t think it through the way you did, but agree with your analysis. “Anonymous player” is not who he says he is and should do a little research before trying to pull that crap.
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Benign? Ask Ryan Clark who had to have organs removed how benign the trait is.
So benign that his coach refused to put him on the game day roster for road trips to Denver.
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Wow, this chain of replies is like a summary of where the world is at today. When someone expresses an opinion and provides relevant factual information, others are quick to belittle the original opinion based not on factual argument, but belittling comments. (Except for Derek? Thanks for being constructive!)
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Another step that makes the season less likely.
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I’m more worried about how this plays if the season does start. If a coach won’t even tell his player’s teammate, do you think he’ll tell an opponent?
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I thought the coach told the student athletes parents that he would treat their son like his own….so much for the safety of others….
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If the season starts, they’ll have specific (conference or Power-5) guidelines in place for how positive COVID-19 results must be handled. If a coach tried to hide a positive result once those guidelines are officially set up, I imagine the coach would be punished, possibly suspended or even fired. At least I would hope so.
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I thought anyone diagnosed was supposed to self quarantine….or that masks solved everything,…I get confused..
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You’re telling us?
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So.?
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I hope everyone enjoyed the shot of dopamine you got from feeling self righteous about this. There is one key sentence here.
How much time has passed between the positive player finding out the result and him calling his roommate? Did he tell his coaches / medical staff that he wanted to be the one to tell his roommate? How much time elapsed between the roommate finding out before he contacted his coaches / medical staff? Is there any evidence that the coaches / medical staff were not going to tell the roommate? Until you know the answer to those questions (and many more) this isn’t news; it is a narative.
We live in the era of fake news, people. The media will use your desire to feel self-righteous indignation to generate clicks. Truth be damned.
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If you take the time to read the opener, you’ll see that the kid found out his roommate had COVID in late June and as of the time the article was published, July 17, nobody from the school had informed him.
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If you read my list of questions, one of them is “How much time elapsed between the roommate finding out before he contacted his coaches / medical staff?” The other questions still hold as well. I would also ask if the coaches / medical staff were informed that the positive player had informed his roommate. We do not know the answers to any of these questions. Everything here is an assumption of what happened. It could have played out the say you are imagining in your head. We don’t know. In terms of the Jussie Smollett hoax, we are the the stage where the news is reporting that he was beaten-up by a bunch of white dude in MAGA hats instead of pretend beaten-up by Nigerians he hired to perpetuate a hoax.
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I saw your list of questions and answered the one in particular.
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That is curious.
I thought the quarantine period was 14 days?
Late June to the 17th of July could be as many as 21-25 days and at a bare minimum 18 days. That would not even be factoring the lab time necessary to process the test.
Seems as though I read the NCAA guidelines saying something about players being held out of activities for a period of 10 days after a positive test.
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The player said he never heard the same message from the coaches.
How could the coaches be sure that everyone who needed to know, knew?
Would a responsible adult leave that important communication to the player alone?
If an employee tested positive for covid and said: “I’ll let everyone know” would you relieve yourself from the responsibility you have to your other employees?
If you’re going to promote yourself as some “discerning news reader” you’re doing a terrible job.
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Well said..
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Every thing about that USA Today “article” is a manipulative, pandering, virtue signalling piece of complete garbage.
Hook, line, sinker.
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I’m sure the player agrees with you.
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…”the player”..
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…”the commenter”..
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… “SF Dog”..
Do you really think we’re that naive?
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We? Who is we? Are you apart of the Senator’s editorial board? What do my thoughts regarding how terrible that USA Today article is and how surprised I am that the Senator is utilizing it on his sight have any thing to do with you?
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Whats next? An in depth article from the sports department at Teen Vogue?!?
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I just wanted “SF Dog” to understand that “we” (stop pretending you don’t know) all know there is no such person or entity and any efforts to suggest otherwise by “SF Dog” are falling upon deaf ears. I’m surprised that the charade has lasted this long and that the wordpress security discriminators and personnel haven’t yet located and eliminated “the target.” Maybe because its sunday? In any event the safest course moving forward for “SF Dog” would be to disconnect from all external communication services as a last ditch effort to prevent both “detection” and the resultant “cleansing.”
If “we” can invent “the player” and spread misinformation and propaganda across the interwebs, do you think “we” can tolerate security liabilities such as “SF Dog?” I can assure that “we” will not.
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He’s posted here before now.
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So what if he has posted here before, never, or ever again. Only person more thin skinned than you is trump. If you spend your day reading USA Today then you will be shocked at real news
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Christ, you missed the point.
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LOL. The only person that has never missed the nuance of an argument is you. Good grief man. Step away from fake news hose
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It does seem almost ironic that an article written about an anonymous source at an unnamed institution to protect the privacy of the unnamed source for personal reasons is espousing the need to disseminate private medical records for other individuals.
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Or you could, if you value the privacy angle, simply take from the article the impracticalities presented by playing football in the midst if an uncontrolled pandemic and the motives behind trying to play anyway.
Which is the point isn’t it?
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The article has a lot to unpack. If the article title was, Are Universities doing enough to ensure the safety of athletes? or Universities need to do more for COVID player safety, I think it would have been more impactful. Obviously, there is a broken process where a kid has to find out from his roommate that the said roommate has COVID. That is an issue and universities need to provide more information on how they do their notification process. The article would have been more compelling if the author had gotten a university to explain their process…. I didn’t see that in the article although it is really neat that he quoted the chancellor emeritus at SUNY —- not sure if it was in relation to the article or just something in general she said.
Transparency is important and Senator, you pointed it out best, someone needs to share what university it was. It is hard to look at all 257 Division I football programs equally (FBS and FCS). I would bet Nichols State has less resources than Ohio State and might not have good processes in place.
I also find the “While college football players are routinely exposed to serious injury, this year many of them were exposed to COVID-19 more than two months before the general student body was scheduled to return to campus during the coronavirus pandemic.” totally asinine. This kind of throwaway statement implies that students and student athletes only get exposed on campus rather than the student athletes who showed up on campus tested positive when they arrived.
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For What it’s Worth:
If COVID was a football game “Tyler Simmons was on sides.” There are so many specifics and negativity being thrown around we really don’t know who has the right rule book and how they interpret the rules. Last week the PGA had in the last group one player had tested positive with 14 day quarantine, playing with others while exposed who had a 10 day quarantine. They interviewed 4 UGA students this morning and none of the 4 said they felt comfortable/safe moving into dorms/apartments and downtown Athens still open. The best we can do is encourage and not spew venom at any sign of adversity. If this were a ballgame it would be USCJR and Kirby is screaming pregame were not f+*;’l&@ing ready to play. A disgruntled locker room or blog doesn’t have the winning edge. We got to pull together.
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Our readiness to dismiss any and all information that doesn’t conform to our priors – for a new virus where everything is in flux and constant re-evaluation – is really breathtaking to behold in an audience so in live with higher education football.
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Oh, c’mon. It’s not as if coaches have ever tried to bury player health problems before.
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That’s the real worry if a season starts: coaches who are facing “win this season or you’re fired” might be more motivated to avoid transparency if it leads to more wins (whereas stable coaches may hate it, but have to be careful because it could impact recruiting for years.) And we hope many will do the right thing because it’s the right thing, but if that were more common we wouldn’t have the case numbers we have now.
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Ive really done a mental deep dive and I just don’t see how you can rationally have college football, which on paper, is non paid student athletes, that have been given a scholarship to attend school and grow educationally while performing sports as a way to grow and mature and bring unity and pride to a University/college, its community, its fans, it’s alum, even the state or city, while not having class…Or even not having fans. It seems so completely absurd and hypocritical, and I know that the money drives all of it of course, But it’s so highlighted now. The answer is just no football this fall. If it was all the other sports to be played in the fall, but not football or basketball, lets say Football was always played in the Spring, and all the other sports in the fall, they would be canceled already.
There’s a time during the lock downs news reported that some people were finding what’s importing and meaningful in their life and people were even reconnecting with their families and their children. But then the day lockdown ended people hit the road went on vacations, screw the guidelines everywhere, the beaches and tourist areas are already busy and packed. The point was not to go to entertainment as normal but to allow people to get outside and begin functioning more and get back to work. I fundamentally want the small businesses and service folks that derive income from the college football season not to be impacted. But ultimately on paper these are student athletes whom are students and that should be 1st priority. It just doesn’t look like there’s gonna be students on campus in a lot of places this fall. Maybe all of them. I can understand waiting until the 1st or 2nd week of August to make a final decision. But when you look at what’s truly important and what is safe and that these are student athletes the conclusion is very clear unless you’re trying to broker for TV viewership. Which does help all the Tech folks involved in TV and production to have a job but it still doesn’t provide for the communities and even University staff also that work at games. A professional European soccer league playing soccer with no fans is just not the same as a college playing football with no fans and no class.
And I’m not arguing are getting into what we could have done or should have done to be in better shape I’m talking about where we are today in what is rational. If most activities of groups and entertainment is too dangerous, Well then therefore college Athletics are also too dangerous. Furthermore it is completely clear to even the non crazed fan that the NCAA is incompetent and has Not gotten ahead of this thing to create over reaching guidelines expectations rules methods courses of action.
Bottom line is it’s a pretty big mess right now all in the hope to play out some sort of season all over TV revenue. I believe The best thing to possibly happen to actually have a game would be a handful of XA bischen games to at least allow seniors to move on drafts to take place and those sorts of things to get back to hopefully a normal cycle In twenny twenny one. But that would require everyone to put on big boy britches acceot things where they stand and make some hard decisions If even that is possible.
Right now it still looks like in 2 weeks a decision will be made to postpone till October. Unless some miracle of miracles is to come which it’s just not happening. But they will kick the can weekly and monthly till the inevitable arrives.
Thank you.
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I think 2 events happen over the next 2 weeks that may inform Fall NCAA sports. MLB starts its season on Thursday and Rookie Camp for the NFL starts on Tuesday with all players back by a week from Tuesday.
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Well, we still dont know what the acceptable parameters are for playing football. They (schools/conferences) are still stuck on start. Eventually, if they are going to play a season, they will have to accept the fact that there will be positive cases on the field at all times. Personally, we (society) need to get there as well. Sure, the spread can be slowed, resisted, and confronted, but it cant be stopped. Not in this country.
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Florida tourists have no care. This county had very low #s until the beaches opened.
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Sounds like redskins article. 14 “people” came forward. But how many are named, one? USA Today is a cesspool of fake news. I make no distinction between “reporters” and “sports reporters”. No I didn’t read the article because you don’t have to read it just by reading the comments here. Unscrupulous Fucks all around
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