Thinking positive: How will restarted sports handle the inevitable coronavirus cases?
The NC Courage started individual workouts Monday, kicking balls around and taking shots, as mundane an activity as possible and yet still like the first green shoots poking through the spring frost. At this point, any sign of sports is a step toward their full return, as far away as that may yet be.
So far, all of the plans for the resumption of professional sports presume a sort of coronavirus bubble, a combination of testing and quarantine designed to build an epidemiological wall. Whether it’s a plan as far along as NASCAR’s or the PGA Tour’s or as hazy as the rough proposals under consideration in the NBA or NHL, the ability to isolate and test is fundamental.
Even that’s a little more complicated than it sounds, because it extends beyond players and coaches and officials and staff to people only peripherally involved with the playing of the games, whether that’s the arena employees keeping the lights on or the bus drivers shuttling players between arena and sequestered hotel or caterers and housekeepers. The biodome bubble gets very big, very fast — and still includes large numbers of at-risk people, whether because of age or preexisting conditions.
But there’s a way to plan for all of that, if you have the time and the space and the money. The PGA Tour has decided who is allowed on campus, so to speak, and will charter planes to move those golfers and caddies and coaches from site to site. It plans to conduct about 400 tests a week via a private lab in Texas.
The plan no one really has yet, is what happens when there is a positive test. Or worse, if one positive test becomes a dozen. The PGA Tour plans to quarantine any single player or other individual that tests positive. But that’s easy in an individual sport. What does the NBA do if LeBron James or Steph Curry tests positive? What does NASCAR do if an entire pit crew tests positive?
“There’s not a specific number that we’re focused on,” PGA Tour senior vice president Andy Levinson said. “You know, when there is a positive test, there does have to be some contact tracing that takes place, which is one of the many reasons why social distancing is so important. And so we haven’t identified a specific number, but obviously if it was a large number then we would have to evaluate the situation.”
These are all questions without answers so far, and the stakes are high. Getting started and then having to shut down again would be disastrous. In Germany, where the soccer league resumed Saturday, one second-division team forfeited its first game because of two positive tests.
Stateside, the NASCAR and golf experiments will be watched closely by the other pro sports as well as the NCAA. If those sports, where physical distancing is easily maintained and personnel easily restricted, can maintain their COVID-19 bubbles, then perhaps there’s hope for team sports. If they cannot, that’s an equally valuable lesson.
As Oklahoma football coach (and former East Carolina assistant coach) Lincoln Riley told reporters in Oklahoma this week while urging extreme caution, “We get one shot at this, and we’ve gotta do it right.”
On a call with NBA executives this week, Adam Silver said that if a single positive test “shut us down, we probably shouldn’t go down this path,” according to ESPN, which cited sources who were on the call. But the question of what to do about multiple tests was left open and unresolved. It is unresolved as well in the NHL’s discussions, which include Raleigh as one of the cities under consideration for the its plan to return at four neutral sites and conduct some form of playoffs later this summer.
“It all will depend on the precise circumstances,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly wrote in an email.
Then there are the athletes, who have to agree to all of this — in some cases, potentially being quarantined without their families for weeks or even months at a time. Washington Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle posted a lengthy Twitter thread Monday outlining the potential health implications for players, their families and everyone else required.
“It feels like we’ve zoomed past the most important aspect of any MLB restart plan: health protections for players, families, staff, stadium workers and the workforce it would require to resume a season,” Dootlittle wrote.
Tampa Bay Rays pitcher and 2018 Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell went even farther on his Twitch channel, arguing that the potential risk to his health wasn’t worth his major-league salary — especially with MLB attempting to negotiate salary cuts as part of its return-to-play plan.
“It’s not worth it,” Snell said. “I love baseball and that, but it’s just not worth it.”
If these questions are difficult for pro sports to answer at this point, they’re almost impossible for colleges. There is, first of all, the fundamental question of whether the NCAA and its schools can justify having athletes on campus for purposes of competition if students in general are not. The NCAA’s “collegiate model” and all of the restrictions (and profits) that come with it is predicated on the notion of the “student-athlete.” Inviting athletes back to campus when it is not deemed safe for students would remove the underpinnings of the NCAA’s defense in countless lawsuits.
You can put a pro team in a bubble, but for a college team the entire campus has to be in a bubble.
Getting students back on campus, at the moment, looks neither easy nor inexpensive. In going to an all-online model this fall, the Cal State system estimated that it would cost $25 million a week to test half the students on its 23 campuses. An entire Division II conference consisting of Cal State campuses immediately pulled the plug on fall sports after that; Division I schools like Fresno State and San Diego State have major decisions to make.
“The idea of having treatment available or a vaccine to facilitate the re-entry of students in the fall term would be a bridge too far,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congress last week.
While some collegiate leaders have been outspoken in their desire to forge ahead regardless — West Virginia president Gordon Gee, 76, said football would be played even if he had to suit up — Riley has perhaps been the loudest voice of caution across that entire spectrum. North Carolina coach Mack Brown said he still hoped to have his players back on campus July 1, but acknowledged the hurdles that have to be cleared first, especially when it comes to testing.
“Are we going to test them before every practice?” Brown said. “Are we going to make sure we know what the temperature is, and how many degrees does his temperature have to be off before he misses practice or before he misses class? … I can’t bring our coaches back to campus without knowing that they’re safe. I can’t possibly bring a recruit and his family on campus without knowing they’re completely safe.”
With 15 schools in 10 states, the ACC could face a wide disparity in governmental guidance as it tries to get both students and athletes back on campus this fall. Commissioner John Swofford said Thursday it was possible the ACC would proceed this fall without all of its schools participating, although he took a cautious and pragmatic line about any resumption of athletics.
Swofford said the ACC was watching the professional leagues and their testing regimens closely with the idea of having a leaguewide protocol in place. But what that might actually look like, he had no idea.
“There just aren’t a lot of answers at this given point in time,” Swofford said. “To get to the answers, you have to identify the questions. To get to the questions, some of them are obvious and easy, but they also lead to other questions. I’ve been in this a long time. Intercollegiate athletics has never been in a more challenging situation in my career. But you could say that about so many aspects of our country.”
This story was originally published May 16, 2020 at 12:25 PM with the headline "Thinking positive: How will restarted sports handle the inevitable coronavirus cases?."
