The ACC will delay the start of competition for all fall sports until at least Sept. 1

awbuzz

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Sports is actually easier that we think it is as long is there are not fans. You run regular tests of everyone involved. You keep the team isolated. It’s a tough decision for college age men and women if they want to do this.

Actually there will be far more risk to the fans who might get to attend. Typical transmission happens in close quarters for several hours.


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Isolate and still attend classes?
 

Jmonty71

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Agreed. Our view towards death is nowhere near as cavalier as it was in the early 20th century. Or mid-20th century for that matter. I read an article a few years ago that attributed the widespread death witnessed in WWII as the reasoning behind so much of the modern aversion to anything with a high casualty count.
I disagree... I think if push came to shove, the U.S. would create the stomach and desire to squash whatever may be. If you recall, the Japanese thought that the U.S. didn't have the stomach for war, in the early 40s. Yes, there are people that rather get ruled by whoever, because they don't believe in fighting. But, for the most part, I think if backed into a corner, we'd come out fully fighting.
 

Jmonty71

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I saw something over the weekend saying that there were a number of coaches against playing games, if students weren't allowed back on campus. I am really thinking that we will not have a football season, this year.
 

FredJacket

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I saw something over the weekend saying that there were a number of coaches against playing games, if students weren't allowed back on campus. I am really thinking that we will not have a football season, this year.
Students will be allowed back on campuses (most campuses). I saw a pretty detailed "plan" from UNC over the weekend. Early return to start class in August. Fall semester/exams complete prior to Thanksgiving. The theory was if a 2nd wave was coming that time (late Nov/Dec) would be the window. The plan included a lot of detail on housing, class size, etc. My impression is something really unexpected (like a sudden spike over summer) would have to happen to keep colleges from getting students back on campus.

https://www.unc.edu/posts/2020/05/21/return-to-campus/
 

orientalnc

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It is very sad that the response to this virus has evolved into a left/right political battle. Alabama and Georgia and North Carolina are in the midst of reopening and the number of cases is surging in all three. Montgomery's health people are saying they are in crisis mode there. NC has seen their rolling 7-day average of hospitalizations rise for seven consecutive days. Georgia is seeing their case counts continuing to rise. This does not currently look like a summer decline is happening. In NC we are seeing the President and our governor squabbling about the RNC convention in Charlotte because NC is slower reopening. It's just crazy.

I am older, so I will not be going to a packed stadium or basketball arena this year. And I will not be welcoming people into my home that do. Nothing about the virus has changed since March. We are still just as vulnerable. There is no vaccine likely this year, nor is there an effective treatment.

Given the current state of things, colleges are still hedging their bets about reopening residence halls and having in person classes. There is no logic in having optimism about the football season. It may happen in some form, but it's tough going ahead to make that happen.
 

Augusta_Jacket

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I disagree... I think if push came to shove, the U.S. would create the stomach and desire to squash whatever may be. If you recall, the Japanese thought that the U.S. didn't have the stomach for war, in the early 40s. Yes, there are people that rather get ruled by whoever, because they don't believe in fighting. But, for the most part, I think if backed into a corner, we'd come out fully fighting.

I'm not sure you are correct. 9/11 saw the death of 3000 Americans, about 600 more than Pearl Harbor, yet within months after the start of the War on Terror, Americans of both conservative and liberal bent were questioning the need for American lives to be lost overseas. As @smokey_wasp pointed out above, it was common for families to lose a child or two as recently as 100 years ago. As a society, we no longer view death the way we used to, and that's a good thing.
 

Techster

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Your comment lets me, as well as everyone reading, know that you totally miss the point. You're absolutely right, no one would do anything ending in death if they could predict the future. Guess what? We for a fact know that human to human contact increases the risk of infection. Infection increases your risk of hospitalization and/or death. In essence, you're saying we know these kids have a chance of increasing the probability of hospitalization or death, but hey I'm bored on Saturday, let them take their chances. Do you think if Brandon knew his chances of death increased that day by participating in that activity he would have gone forward with it? By using Brandon as an example you picked a poor example, so you should probably just stand down on that.

You're a data guy. Here's some data for you. Doctors and scientists are finding a bigger and bigger correlation between vitamin D deficiency and Covid 19 mortality rates.

https://dailynorthwestern.com/2020/...in-d-deficiency-and-covid-19-mortality-rates/

Do you know what race in America has the highest frequency of vitamin D deficiency? African Americans. It's not because of poor nutrition, but because the best way to absorb vitamin D naturally is through skin and sunlight. Well, because black people through thousands of years of evolution have darker skin, they have a harder time absorbing vitamin D naturally. Guess what race makes up the highest percentage of football players? African Americans. You're a smart guy, Liberty. I don't think you need me to connect the dots on that one.

Do you want to take this another step further? Let's do it...

In addition to vitamin D deficiency, what other factor increases the chance of hospitalization and death? Obesity:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...-hospitals-challenges-much-harder/5221600002/

A growing number of studies and data on COVID-19 deaths confirm the link. The extra weight on people in the 40-plus BMI range who contract COVID-19 increases the chance they will require hospitalization, most likely in the intensive care unit. It also hampers the ability of physicians to treat them, especially with ventilators, doctors say.

Read that bolded part again. If you're not familiar with the BMI chart: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323586#bmi-charts

Essentially, that puts our OLs and DLs in the danger zone.

So if you're an African Amercian OL or DL, and you have to constantly make physical contact with people who are not subject to contact tracing...how do you feel about your chances of infection and possible hospitalization from Covid 19? From constant person to person contact from football activities, to biological predilection to vitamin D deficiency, to falling into the BMI danger zone for covid 19...well, isn't that a field full of probability landmines if you're an African American OL or DL? Heck, even if you're a caucasian OL or DL, your chances of Covid 19 hospitalization and possible death also increases.

As human beings, we have the responsibility to mitigate risk for others, not increase it.

We haven't even mentioned the long term negative effects Covid 19 has on the body once infected either.

That's OK though...they aren't someone's son, or brother, or husband, or friend. They're just a body in a uniform there for our entertainment, right? At best, this is just ignorance of the repurcussions of this virus, at worst, it's just callousness toward human life.

Something I brought up in a discussion earlier:



Conference commissioners, college presidents, athletics directors have acknowledged that as football teams return to play, there will inevitably be cases and perhaps even outbreaks that pop up in athletics facilities. The belief — or maybe it’s merely a hope — is that players who contract the virus will recover because they are healthy and young.

But that assumption, according to some infectious disease experts, might ignore a hidden danger lurking in every locker room: Does the sheer size of offensive or linemen put them into a higher-risk category for COVID-19 complications?

“Yes, I’m concerned about players with high BMI (Body Mass Index) as compared to players who do not have high BMI,” said Gretchen Snoeyenbos Newman, an infectious disease fellow at the University of Washington. “I don’t know what that means in a lived clinical way for these athletes, and I don’t think anybody knows yet. That’s the scary part.”

“Everything being equal, individuals who are obese by Body Mass Index do tend to have more of a tendency to develop severe infection than someone who is not obese, and that applies whether you’re an athlete or not an athlete,” said Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins and an expert in infectious disease who is part of the NCAA’s coronavirus advisory panel. “The cardio pulmonary fitness of a linemen who has a high Body Mass Index … they may be better off (than the non-athlete) but in general obesity is a risk factor we have to think about.”

Thomas Russo, an infectious disease expert with the University at Buffalo medical school, said it was an “interesting question” whether linemen would be more at risk than other players of developing a severe infection but tied it more to the nature of their position than body weight. Whereas a wide receiver might have more limited close contact with a cornerback through the course of a game, someone on the line of scrimmage is lining up face-to-face with an opponent on every play.

“They’re the ones who are in the trenches getting pelted with respiratory secretions,” Russo said. “You’re in someone’s face every play and breathing hard and you’re in these piles all the time. They might get a huge viral load if someone on the field was infected.”

As Russo said, rather grimly, “This whole concept of, ‘Oh they’re young, they’re healthy they’ll recover, is a flawed concept. Whoever comes up with this is clearly someone that isn’t thinking about this from a medial point of view. No one is bulletproof on this, OK? There are still going to be people who are younger, in their late teens or 20s that perhaps for genetic reasons are going to have a bad outcome. It’s statistics.”

And because COVID-19 hasn’t been around but a few months, there’s no way to quantify the long-term risk, even if someone recovers.
It’s also currently inclusive, according to both experts and the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, whether sickle cell trait — a common factor in sudden football-related deaths — is a factor in COVID-19 outcomes.

If college athletic programs aren’t making those unknowns abundantly clear to the players under their care, it’s a dereliction of their duty.

“You have to think about not just are you going to die but are you going to get really really sick and what might that mean for your career,” Snoeyenbos Newman said. “It’s definitely not all or nothing. There’s a huge spectrum of illness that happens and some of it is quite severe and long lasting. There are outcomes that are bad that are not death.”


An Emory doctor has a somewhat more positive opinion, but with a caveat:

The lead investigator of that study, Jonathan H. Kim, is a sports cardiologist at Emory University and works with all three major professional sports teams in Atlanta. As is the case with many questions surrounding COVID-19, he said, the answer is that we don’t really know whether certain types of players are more at-risk of a severe infection.

"It’s very fair to state that college football players, regardless of position, are still overall healthy and so my initial opinion would be they’re not at higher risk for cardiac complications post-COVID,” Kim said. “But these are the questions we want to ask because ultimately we know COVID is going to be with us for the foreseeable future and we need to know the best way to take care of these athletes and try to mitigate potential cardiac risk down the line for them.”

Kim more recently co-authored an opinion piece laying out recommendations for athletes who return to training and exercise after they recover from COVID-19. Even for athletes who experience only mild symptoms and aren’t hospitalized, these guidelines put forth by the American College of Cardiology’s Sports & Exercise Council suggest two weeks of no exercise after symptoms subside plus cardiac testing to look for any underlying heart inflammation or injury before a return to play.


We're about to enter into a real live experiment to answer a lot of these questions. For the sake of these SAs that are about to be real live medical trial samples, let's all hope the outcomes are positive because the other option could be devastating.

Also something the elite players with NFL futures will have to think about: Is it worth risking long term health to play given the uncertainties and possible long term health issues?
 

wreckmaniac

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So UGA , a team that always loves quarterback controversy, takes a cast-off quarterback from U of Sou Cal. I think Kirby wants every player to try out for QB and then decides where
they should play. Never has a top-tier team missed so often on QB talent. Deshawn Watson and Trevor Lawrence from GA decide to play at Clemson. UGA throws away Justin
Fields and Jacob Eason to play whoever that guy was who played last year. Don't get it but I say keep it up.
 

wreckmaniac

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Notre Dame is a non-conference football team. This is their holy grail. Never join a football conference . They are obligated to play 4 ACC football teams every year
in order to compete as an in-conference ACC basketball team. Not football. When you negotiate with ND, you do everything on their terms. Actually I like this arrangement.
ND would never elect to play in a conference with Clemson as Clemson is today. The last time Tech played them, as I recall and I may be wrong, Tech mauled ND at ND as
Teshard Choice ran for a million yards.
 
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Notre Dame is a non-conference football team. This is their holy grail. Never join a football conference . They are obligated to play 4 ACC football teams every year
in order to compete as an in-conference ACC basketball team. Not football. When you negotiate with ND, you do everything on their terms. Actually I like this arrangement.
ND would never elect to play in a conference with Clemson as Clemson is today. The last time Tech played them, as I recall and I may be wrong, Tech mauled ND at ND as
Teshard Choice ran for a million yards.
No, the last time was at South Bend in 2015, and Tech lost 30-22. Tech started off the game terribly, but came back in the 4th quarter and at least made it look good. I was at that game, my only trip to South Bend.
 

JacketOff

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The last few posts here ^ are some of the strangest, most irrelevant posts I’ve ever seen on this board. Did you guys even attempt to read the title of this thread?
 

RamblinRed

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https://www.cbssports.com/college-f...portedly-tested-positive-for-the-coronavirus/

https://www.cbssports.com/college-f...oners-off-campus-until-july-were-not-the-nfl/

https://www.si.com/college/2020/06/02/coronavirus-covid-testing-college-football-return

it is going to be such a weird year. Every school is basically its own experiment.

I still can't imagine there not being some sort of season as the AD's know without the TV FB revenue their budgets are shot. I just hope we don't have a spike later this summer that causes it all to come crashing down before it gets started.

I also have a hard time seeing people in the stands - especially the first few weeks.
NBA and NHL are both going to finish their seasons without fans.
MLB, if they return, is likely to do so without fans at least at the beginning.
NFL just stays tight lipped and pretends it is going to proceed as scheduled but by August/September I suspect they will likely be the first to try to have fans, but not whole stadiums.
 

ugacdawg

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So UGA , a team that always loves quarterback controversy, takes a cast-off quarterback from U of Sou Cal. I think Kirby wants every player to try out for QB and then decides where
they should play. Never has a top-tier team missed so often on QB talent. Deshawn Watson and Trevor Lawrence from GA decide to play at Clemson. UGA throws away Justin
Fields and Jacob Eason to play whoever that guy was who played last year. Don't get it but I say keep it up.

Justin quit, and Eason didn’t do any better at UW. The cast-off from USC was a 5* ranked 3rd behind Lawrence and Fields and if GT had landed him he’d have been received as a God by Tech fans. How many QBs did Tech try out in games last year? A lot. Watson was a miss by the last regime and Lawrence would have won the job and been a better choice than Fields but sometimes you miss. The last 3 Heismen winners were transfers and Burrow was a ‘castoff’ too. You recruit the highest talent you can and see who has the mind and fortitude to rise above. At least Kirby is getting the at-bats. He’ll find a homerun eventually. If not JT then the 2021 5* lined up behind him will get his shot.
 

SteamWhistle

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Justin quit, and Eason didn’t do any better at UW. The cast-off from USC was a 5* ranked 3rd behind Lawrence and Fields and if GT had landed him he’d have been received as a God by Tech fans. How many QBs did Tech try out in games last year? A lot. Watson was a miss by the last regime and Lawrence would have won the job and been a better choice than Fields but sometimes you miss. The last 3 Heismen winners were transfers and Burrow was a ‘castoff’ too. You recruit the highest talent you can and see who has the mind and fortitude to rise above. At least Kirby is getting the at-bats. He’ll find a homerun eventually. If not JT then the 2021 5* lined up behind him will get his shot.
Mods, take out the trash.
 

Southpawmac

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Justin quit, and Eason didn’t do any better at UW. The cast-off from USC was a 5* ranked 3rd behind Lawrence and Fields and if GT had landed him he’d have been received as a God by Tech fans. How many QBs did Tech try out in games last year? A lot. Watson was a miss by the last regime and Lawrence would have won the job and been a better choice than Fields but sometimes you miss. The last 3 Heismen winners were transfers and Burrow was a ‘castoff’ too. You recruit the highest talent you can and see who has the mind and fortitude to rise above. At least Kirby is getting the at-bats. He’ll find a homerun eventually. If not JT then the 2021 5* lined up behind him will get his shot.
Justin quit because he had to deal with racist fans calling him the n-word from the stands and being backup to a self proclaimed "elite white" person. What is it about uGA fans always wanting to be on Tech boards? I never have the desire to mingle in the cesspool.
 

LibertyTurns

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Justin quit because he had to deal with racist fans calling him the n-word from the stands and being backup to a self proclaimed "elite white" person. What is it about uGA fans always wanting to be on Tech boards? I never have the desire to mingle in the cesspool.
You’d think they’d be busy polishing all their pre-season national championship trophies.
 
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