Donna Shalala is not your normal Washington DC policy. She is the former president of two gigantic soccer players, Miami and Wisconsin. She knows soccer. And then she knows how difficult it is for the coronavirus to play soccer this fall. Specifically, it encompasses the obstacle of contact tracing, which requires athletes to be quarantined for 14 mandatory days if they have contacted a person who tested positive. Like, for example, hitting each other in practice or flying together on a plane.
“Have you been on a plane with soccer players?” asks Shalala, a novice member of the House of Representatives for South Florida. “They are great boys. Sometimes they leave the middle seat open, but they are not six feet from each other.
“It’s getting to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised if they changed all athletics to spring,” continues Shalala, who still often communicates with high-ranking authorities in college athletics. “The reason is not simply the spread of the disease, but one of the things that no one is writing about is contact tracing. Someone on your offensive line gets infected, you have to isolate the entire offensive line for 14 days. “
Shalala gave that quote over a week ago in an interview with Illustrated Sports. It seems prophetic now. On Friday, Michigan State announced that its entire team, each player, will be quarantined for two weeks after a more recent round of testing revealed a positive result for a second member of its staff. The Spartans became at least the 12th FBS team this summer to suspend training due to an outbreak in the community or on campus. They become the first to publicly announce a full team quarantine, but they may not be the last.
As it is written extensively in YES Tuesday, the biggest hurdle to celebrating a college football season this fall is not the real positive tests not travel You are not testing availability or delayed response times (although those are real concerns). And it’s not even the mid-August return of thousands of students on campus (but that’s also pretty significant).
It is contact tracing, resulting in the potential closure of large swaths of a soccer team, or in the case of Michigan State, of the entire team. “That is a good example of what can happen,” said a group of 5 athletic directors on Friday when the news broke.
The NCAA and Power 5 seasonal medical plans recommend that a school quarantine players for 14 days if they are found to have had “high risk” contact with a positive person. High-risk contact includes those who are within six feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes while one or both parties are not wearing a mask. The Power 5 plan, obtained by YES Last week, it also included a “high risk” contact such as “anyone who participates in face-to-face or contact drills.”
While the NCAA guidelines are not as specific, several doctors believe that a high-risk contact is a practical collision. “For me, in football, these physical contacts and times when people breathe with each other are considered high-risk exposures,” says Jon Drezner, the team’s doctor in Washington and a member of the virus advisory panel at the Pac-12. And while a 14-day quarantine is conservative, doctors say, it follows CDC guidelines. Even with an early negative test, the virus can emerge on day 13 or day 14. It is a safe approach and I am not sorry.
While presumptuous, the staff members who tested positive in the state of Michigan are, in all likelihood, people who have had close contact with the players, such as a team coach, doctor, or strength coach. It just makes sense. Why quarantine the entire team if not? The Spartans are in a real situation now. Friday was the start of the NCAA’s new six-week preseason plan: two weeks of “enhanced training” that includes tours; and four weeks of camping beginning around August 7th.
While programs across the country are beginning their most extensive work this summer, the Spartans are blocked. The state of Michigan will be behind others, for two weeks or even more. Players may need to re-acclimatize when they return on August 7 at the earliest. While other teams are gearing up for the easy transition from field trips to large-scale camp, the Spartans and their new coach Mel Tucker will, in a sense, restart training again.
And what if this happens during the season? The NCAA Football Oversight Committee has been debating that issue, trying to determine how many players on a team would have to be infected or quarantined for that team to be ineligible to play. “Within the Big 12, we’ve talked about ‘If a certain percentage of your team is out, you’re not going to play.’ Is it 25% of your list? Who is signing that? Are there ways to invent that? asks Shane Lyons, chairman of the Football Oversight Committee.
Friday did not improve, as for the news about viruses in the world of university sports. Just hours after the Michigan state bomb, the NCAA hosted its weekly question-and-answer segment on Twitter with Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s first medical director. The segment was one of the bleakest yet. Hainline said tests across the country continue to be delayed. Response times for results can be extended to a week, which is a major problem for college football teams that must regain results within 72 hours during the season. Nor does he expect a vaccine soon. “Let’s face it,” he told host Andy Katz and about 500 viewers, “We have to plan well until 2021 (without one). Hoping that by the end of this year or early 2021, it doesn’t seem realistic. “
So what does all this mean? Obstacles to college football remain, especially a 14-day quarantine for positive contacts. The state of Michigan became the most recent and significant victim.
“It is very difficult to play sports this fall. I know they want to, but if you really talk to them, they don’t know how to do it, “says Shalala. “I am thinking about each sport and how they travel. Even schools say we are only doing conferences (games). Look at the Big Ten and where it needs to go: Rutgers to Maryland to Indiana to Michigan. “
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