Athletes’ return to campus has brought about a disconcerting number of positive COVID-19 tests, and without a singular leadership voice, schools across the country are attempting to handle the consequences in their own style. In the most recent episode of “SBJ Unpacks: The Road Ahead,” our Bill King and Michael Smith discuss how the recent uptick in cases is impacting the prognosis for a college football season.
On the best way for schools to respond to high numbers of positive tests:
Smith: The response that we saw from Florida addressing their positive tests really should be exemplary for other schools to follow, which is to say, ‘We expected some positive tests, and with the health of our University of Florida healthcare system we are very well prepared to manage the situation, to quarantine these student athletes and make sure they’re back to the position of being negative before getting back to the field.’ That, to me, was a good common-sense response, but some of these numbers have probably been a little bit more than expected. It’s all over the board. Notre Dame, for example, has had very, very few, and there are other schools like that where the number of cases, positive tests, have not yielded those kind of numbers.
On how optimistic people around the sport are now compared to a couple of months ago:
Smith: It’s diminished somewhat. There’s a greater level of uncertainty because of some of those positive tests that we’ve seen. … For the longest time, what we heard from college administrators, ADs and commissioners was, ‘We’ve got plenty of time. We’ve learned a lot in the last 30 days, and we’ve got two or three more months before kickoff to figure this out.’ That time is winding down. We’re approaching a time as we move into July next week, we’re approaching a period where it’s going to be time to make some decisions on playing versus not playing versus limited capacity and all those different scenarios that we’ve been talking about for months now. The consensus really is somewhere between mid-July and August 1st, schools are going to start making decisions with the help of state governments, health officials and campus officials on what the path forward looks like. I still feel like we’re going to have a college football season, but there’s a really good chance it’s going to be disjointed and uneven.
On how schools are planning to handle getting fans into stadiums:
Smith: Most schools are preparing for a number of different scenarios. What happens if the state guidelines say you can only have 10% capacity, and then the scenarios go from there: 25%, 33%, 50% and all the way up to 100. Most of the schools that I’m talking to believe it is going to be somewhere in the 50% range, that they’ll be able to have roughly half the stadium, but then when you take 100,000 seat stadium if you can take half of it that’s 50,000 people. Then you have to incorporate the six-foot distancing with that. That probably gets you down to about 30,000 people. The vast majority of schools that I’ve talked to estimate that they could put 25-30% of their capacity in the stadium with true six-foot distancing guidelines.
