ACC Commissioner John Swofford yesterday said that the league's medical advisory group is "comfortable with its current testing protocols and is not looking at moving to conference-wide daily testing," according to Andrea Adelson of ESPN.com. The ACC currently tests "a minimum of three times per week, which the league started doing when the season began last week." Teams are tested the "day before games, 48 hours after games, and at midweek." Duke is the "only ACC school currently offering daily testing." Swofford said, "If there's a better way to approach it, that makes it safer for our athletes to compete, we'll pivot, but at this point in time, we'll be continuing with what we've started with because it's gone well." Adelson notes so far, three games involving ACC teams have been rescheduled or canceled because of coronavirus-related concerns. But that has "not worried Swofford, because they went into the season fully expecting for there to be stops and starts due to coronavirus." He said, "It's a challenging season, and we feel good about the start of it, we feel good about the flexibility in our scheduling now that we've actually had to use that flexibility, we feel comfortable with the protocols that are in place" (ESPN.com, 9/17).
TENUOUS SITUATION: In Raleigh, Luke DeCock notes Charlotte had to cancel Saturday’s game at UNC because it had "too many offensive linemen in quarantine." DeCock: "Even in a conference like the ACC that has had generally good success keeping the coronavirus away from its players after the initial wave of positive tests on several campuses, the schedule is a precarious thing. Nationally, more than a dozen games have been canceled or rescheduled already." Charlotte’s example shows "how quickly and suddenly that number can grow, and North Carolina is now scrambling to see if it can find a new opponent -- that meets ACC testing protocols -- for its open date next weekend" (Raleigh NEWS & OBSERVER, 9/18).
