sports (including the NFL) & the virus (July)

Texas may not have high school football in 2020 https://t.co/ZWXrCOGO6e

— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) July 9, 2020

The commissioner of the Big Ten just said this on Big Ten Network: "We may not have sports in the fall. We may not have a college football season."

— Michael David Smith (@MichaelDavSmith) July 9, 2020

Trump’s Fumbling of the Coronavirus Crisis Could Kill the College Football Season
The president is marinating in a midsummer mess of his own creation, and his epic failure of leadership will result in a ruined college football season.

https://www.si.com/college/2020/07/16/trump-fumble-coronavirus-response-college-football-season

One of Donald Trump’s favorite things to do as President has been visiting college football games in friendly locations, bathing his eternally needy ego in applause and affirmation. Last season alone, he attended the LSU-Alabama game in November, the Army-Navy game in December, and the College Football Playoff championship between LSU and Clemson in January. The First Football Fan was nearly as ubiquitous within the sport as Kirk Herbstreit.

That’s going to be a difficult vanity play to repeat in 2020.

There will be no college football crowds of the usual size. There might not be college football, period. Pessimism percolates as the time for solutions dwindles. We are speeding in the wrong direction as a nation in terms of combating the coronavirus pandemic, and one of the cultural casualties of American casualness is an endeavor millions of us want and every college athletic department needs.

If the season dies, we know who had the biggest hand in killing any chance of it happening: Donald Trump.

When he inevitably gets around to Twitter-ranting about what has happened to the sport, Trump should instead do what he never does—accept some accountability for the state of affairs. By blowing the summer he’s jeopardized the fall, doing more to endanger the college football season than anyone in America.

Slow to respond, quick to downplay the risk, unwilling to create a national strategy, quite willing to attack governors who took the pandemic seriously, pushing for premature openings of states, flaunting a no-mask stance for months and turning that into a belligerent political statement, Trump and his ideologues are now marinating in a midsummer mess of their own creation. What an epic failure of leadership, one that will deprive Trump of his cherished autumn fealty festivals at a packed football stadium.

As athletic departments do their best to cloister athletes and drive down positive test counts, the spread of disease in regions around many campuses is like wildfire. And on Thursday, the decision makers in college sports laid out the current crisis in stark terms.

A graphic in the NCAA’s latest set of return-to-sport guidelines was a reality slap. The graphic showed where the United States was in terms of confirmed cases in late April, when the NCAA began crafting procedures for how college athletics can resume in the fall. It showed the projected downward trend line for where the U.S. was heading, if it sustained initiatives it had begun and reopened with commensurate pragmatism and care. And it showed how our numbers went the other way while Europe, Canada and Japan flattened the curve.

Graphic showing 7-day rolling count of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Japan
NCAA

From the NCAA report: “As the graph below indicates, when the NCAA began discussions about return of sport after the cancellation of 2020 winter and spring championships, there was an expectation that such a return would take place within a context that assumed syndromic surveillance, national testing strategies and enhanced contact tracing. Although testing and contact tracing infrastructure have expanded considerably, the variations in approach to reopening America for business and recreation have correlated with a considerable spike in cases in recent weeks. This requires that schools contemplate a holistic strategy that includes testing to return to sports with a high contact risk.”

The rest of the NCAA document, and a corresponding set of policies from the Power 5 conferences that was obtained earlier Thursday by my Sports Illustrated colleague Ross Dellenger, portray the daunting task facing college sports—and primarily football—this fall. Crafted with the input of dozens of health experts, the two documents lay out parameters that make it difficult to envision a fall season being played without massive interruption. If it’s played at all.

Consider this, from the NCAA guidelines: “When an athlete tests positive for COVID-19, local public health officials must be notified, and contact tracing protocols must be put in place. All individuals with a high risk of exposure should be placed in quarantine for 14 days as per CDC guidance. This includes members of opposing teams after competition. The difficulty is defining individuals with a high risk of exposure, and in some cases, this could mean an entire team (or teams).”

So, this is a potential scenario as the schedule currently stands: Ohio State plays at Michigan State Oct. 17. Afterward, a Buckeye who saw significant action in the game tests positive. The entire team could then be subject to missing the matchup the following week at Penn State, and the Spartans could be decimated for their game the following week against Indiana. And who knows about the week after that.

Virus spread had been sufficiently contained in some other countries to allow sports to be played, thus far without disastrous fallout. The U.S. has lost all containment, yet still is hoping to play games. Professional leagues are one thing—well-paid adults represented by unions are making their own choices. College athletics, which many in America consider a raw deal for the star athletes in revenue-producing sports, are something else entirely.

Even if everything were going smoothly, the college football optics would not be great. Things are not going smoothly in Donald Trump’s America.

From July 8-15, the average daily confirmed virus cases in the U.S. was 63,018, according to The New York Times. That’s the highest seven-day average to date, which has added rising stress to hospitals and medical personnel in hard-hit states such as Florida, Texas and California.

But this isn’t just about caseload, which many Trump acolytes like to dismiss as immaterial. The positivity rate is climbing, and so is the death rate. The average death toll from July 8-15 was 726, highest it had been in a month after bottoming out at 471 earlier in July. Bad trend. Very bad trend.

What could shut down a season? The NCAA delves into that as well, noting the increase in COVID-19 spread and saying that “it is possible that sports, especially high contact risk sports, may not be practiced safely in some areas. In conjunction with public health officials, schools should consider pausing or discontinuing athletics activities when local circumstances warrant such consideration.” Among the factors that could end a season: “Campuswide or local community test rates that are considered unsafe by local public health officials.”

For everyone screaming that positive tests among young athletes don’t matter, health officials beg to differ. Healthy young people do not live in a vacuum, even on a college campus. They come in contact with many others who can be more susceptible to major health issues, up to and including death.

The caution being preached by every major conference, and the NCAA, is not politics. It’s on advice of people who deal with this disease for a living.

Still, a perverse line of thought has percolated in some dim corners that people with a stake in the game are rooting for the virus and against college football. The NCAA is not rooting against football. The power conferences, having fed at the revenue trough for decades and now begging fans to wear masks, are not rooting against football. The sports media industry, which is staring at its own economic disaster, is not rooting against football.

All those entities very much want college football. They’re also listening to experts tell them why college football is a really risky endeavor right now.

Perhaps football in the fall was always an impossible dream, but it seemed much more real in late May and early June, with America sacrificing and caseloads dropping. Then the shallow reservoir of Trumpian forbearance ran out, and people went back to doing whatever they wanted to do, gorging on “freedom.”

And now we’ll see whether some semblance of college football can still be played. If not, send the receipts for a lost season to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Is this the NFL’s future? These ratings are crazy. https://t.co/RUvCiTmQpD

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 24, 2020

Jeff Passan@JeffPassan
Eight more players and two coaches with the Miami Marlins have tested positive for COVID-19, as an outbreak has spread throughout their clubhouse and brought the total of cases in recent days to at least 14, sources familiar with the situation tell me

The Marlins’ home opener against the Baltimore Orioles tonight has been canceled, sources tell ESPN, as the team remains in Philadelphia and continues to undergo testing.

Judy Battista@judybattista
The Marlins situation is especially sobering because baseball is only one week into the season, and already is grappling with an outbreak.

Craig Mish@CraigMish
As we await the official lab test results this morning from the Marlins, there is real concern many more players have tested positive for COVID-19. This will be the day we find out if MLB can continue to play amidst one team being hit so hard with the virus.

Geoff Schwartz@geoffschwartz
How MLB handles the Marlins team testing positive will be a blueprint for the NFL. I assume they’ve already planned for this to happen once (or more) this season. I can’t imagine they’d shut the whole operation down when 28 other teams can play. (Assuming Philly is quarantine)

The Marlins will either have to forfeit games until they can field a healthy roster or call up players. I don’t think MLB shuts down the season for one team.

And what’s depressing and must be pointed out again … other countries have played sports and haven’t had major outbreaks on their teams.

MLB’s Worst Nightmare Is Here. They Should Have Seen It Coming
The league is grappling with a widespread COVID-19 outbreak on the Miami Marlins.

https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/07/27/miami-marlins-covid-outbreak-testing?suid=5cc1bb7e2ddf9c753fb8acd5&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=SI%20Extra%20072720&utm_term=SI%20Extra%20-%20USE%20THIS%20-%20List

And here we have it, the least surprising possible outcome of MLB’s decision to fly some 1,500 people around the country, from one coronavirus hotspot to another, buttressed by a hope and a prayer and instructions not to spit, in service of playing baseball: They have to stop playing baseball.

Four Marlins players had tested positive for COVID-19 by Sunday afternoon. As of Monday morning, that count was reportedly at least 11 players and two coaches. Miami’s scheduled Monday night home opener against the Orioles has been postponed.

But the Marlins played three games against the Phillies this weekend. Last week, they played two exhibition games in Atlanta against the Braves. It’s impossible to know how far the infected droplets sprayed. Both of the Braves’ primary catchers, Tyler Flowers and Travis d’Arnaud, missed the weekend series against the Mets after they exhibited COVID-19 symptoms. The Phillies players and coaches are waiting on test results; The Athletic reported that their entire visiting clubhouse staff has been quarantined. The Yankees-Phillies game on Monday has been postponed. The season is four days old.

This is a catastrophe. It’s also exactly what epidemiologists have been predicting for weeks.

Owners and players agreed this spring to eschew a “bubble” system—players didn’t want to leave their families and owners didn’t want to cede the revenue that comes from stadium sponsorships—and instead use the more dangerous plan of traveling from city to city. The parties also agreed to test players only every other day, returning results within 48 hours, which means a player could be carrying—and spreading—the virus for nearly four days before he knows about it.

(And MLB can’t even guarantee that insufficient frequency. Within the first few days of summer camp, at least four teams had to cancel workouts because they did not have test results back. The Angels had to delay practice because testers never showed up at all.)

Earlier this month, the league distributed an operations manual of more than 100 pages that laid out everything from the mechanics of placing a player on the injured list to the best way to use the bathroom on the team plane. But it does not address what level of COVID-19 spread would cancel a game or the season.

The Marlins players met before the game on Sunday to discuss their options. Miami manager Don Mattingly said that his team “never really considered not playing.”

Why did athletes, rather than infectious disease specialists, get to make that decision? Because there are no adults in the room. There never have been. Once the owners and the players stopped squabbling over the details and agreed to play, both sides had too much financial incentive to force through a season. Just look at the way the league and the union trumpet their COVID-19 test results every week, announcing the percentage of positive samples, rather than of people, tested. Those numbers are a sham. If someone tests negative three times and then positive the fourth, the first three aren’t a success story.

Commissioner Rob Manfred has not conducted an open interview with the press since February. His most recent media appearance came on Thursday, during the Yankees-Nationals season opener, when he smiled on ESPN while Alex Rodriguez, who is currently trying to buy the Mets, told him what a “tremendous job” he’s done.

All this looks even more reckless in a country that will soon eclipse 150,000 COVID-19 deaths. The Blue Jays will play their home games in Buffalo, because the Canadian government does not want people coming into the country from the United States. Meanwhile, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., both waived for professional sports teams local regulations that would have forced anyone who came into contact with anyone who tested positive to quarantine for 14 days. Over the weekend, while the Marlins were taking two out of three from the Phillies, Florida eclipsed New York as the state with the second-most COVID-19 cases.

League officials are reportedly planning emergency discussions for Monday afternoon. They could have scheduled them a month ago.

The bubble impact on sports:
NBA: 0 positive tests since July 13th
NHL: 0 positive tests in 4,256 administered in 7-day span July 18th-25th
MLS: 0 positive tests in last nine major rounds of testing
NWSL: 0 positive tests during its entire tournament

Huge.

— Field Yates (@FieldYates) July 29, 2020

The Vikings say VP of Sports Medicine/head athletic trainer Eric Sugarman, @EricSugarATC, the team’s Infection Control Officer in the battle against COVID-19, has tested positive for the virus.

— Peter King (@peter_king) July 27, 2020

Bills’ rookies were sent home after a fifth one tested positive for coronavirus.https://t.co/Q11WYNGxYx

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) July 30, 2020

#MLB internal investigation found the #Marlins were very lapse in following protocols during Atlanta trip last weekend, players going out, players in hotel bar, etc. Lots of MLB people very unhappy with Miami

— Scott Miller (@ScottMillerBbl) July 31, 2020

And have heard from players considering opt out but worried about ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for next year. https://t.co/8mdoFxTC5F

— Andrew Brandt (@AndrewBrandt) August 1, 2020

This is what has to concern leagues/teams/players the most. Cannot assume young/healthy athletes will have positive outcomes. https://t.co/xtKTqnC74m

— Andrew Brandt (@AndrewBrandt) August 1, 2020

Colorado State looking into issues with COVID-19 protocols, including alleged intimidation aimed at players with symptoms not getting tested https://t.co/t1G2C6f3sh

— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) August 5, 2020