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

[slugboy]

We seem to have social distancing down:




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[GTNavyNuke]

OK, the NCAA can strip us of a championship and impose recruiting limits etc but they can't impose consistent minimum health standards? Typical NCAA hypocrisy.

I don't think the NCAA can come out with "minimum" standards that all schools are required to follow because they will be too watered down. The NCAA would be seen as the money whores they are. If the NCAA puts out real standards, then the UNC-type schools that make fake classes for "student"-athletes will sue them and win.

I expect the SEC to play football with fans because that is where their priorities are and the money is. I am much less certain the ACC will play if a unanimous consensus of all schools is required.

 

[RamblinRed]

FWIW, Golf is continuing to tighten its bubble a little after another positive test
https://golf.com/news/pga-tour-updating-testing-protocol-again/

We just wait and see, College football has the advantage of time on its side and seeing how other leagues fair. My biggest worry in terms of playing is actually whether the general public will turn on it if college football doesn't come up with some solid protocols. All the professional leagues have huge protocol documents and so far colleges have nothing.

I still think the bigger of the two issues is whether fans will be allowed in the stands, not whether we will start the season.
No league in Europe is playing with fans. No team sports league in the US is playing yet and none are planning on playing with fans for the next month or two.
The only places currently playing with any fans are baseball in Taiwan - where they are limited to 1,500/game, masks required, assigned seats, no drinking or eating at the game and New Zealand where they beat the cases down to zero so they are allowing full houses.

 

[Milwaukee]

No league in Europe is playing with fans.

100% false again, Red.

 

[Jacketman99]

As a parent I would be extremely concerned especially if there is no coherent plan. Contrary to popular belief, young people do for from this. Hospitals are starting to see more young people admitted. Any parent wants to know how you are going to protect their kid. You also have to think about the other vulnerable people they may come into contact with. What happens when there is an outbreak on a team during the season and players or staff need hospitalization or worse?

 

[jacket_fan]

The media will play a role in the way this progresses. I suspect by the time fall camp starts the media will have found villains to go after. There will be more bad news about players and situations, and the media will run with it.

I see the window we were hoping for starting to close.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

I can think of one death as a direct result of college football from the last decade or so - the Maryland kid that sunk Edsall’s career.

Don't forget the kid at UCF that died in practice. UCF and O'Leary were found negligent in his death.

https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20110701/sports/801248656

 

[gtwcf]

I think you're forgetting the guys in Vegas.....unusual changes in lineups will make it really difficult to set lines.

 

[swarmer]

As a parent I would be extremely concerned especially if there is no coherent plan. Contrary to popular belief, young people do for from this. Hospitals are starting to see more young people admitted. Any parent wants to know how you are going to protect their kid. You also have to think about the other vulnerable people they may come into contact with. What happens when there is an outbreak on a team during the season and players or staff need hospitalization or worse?

Is a 21 year old more likely to catch the virus playing football than if they are spending those 4-5 months doing whatever it is they do in their daily lives? You guys aren't naïve enough to think these kids are going to bunkered in somewhere if they arent playing football?

At least in the FB situation they will know if they are infected, and know very early on. Even if they are asymptomatic, they get tested and can isolate themselves; wheras that wouldn't happen in a normal scenario.

 

[RamblinRed]

100% false again, Red.

Which ones are, I just didn't know of any. Happy to be wrong if someone is.

 

[Techster]

Here's an article from May outlining each of the top tier soccer leagues in Europe (Premier - England, La Liga - Spain, Bundesliga - Germany, Serie A - Italy, Ligue 1 - France).

https://www.espn.com/soccer/english...-ligamore-stand-with-finishing-2019-20-season

None of them are allowing fans at the moment. France Ligue 1 play is still suspended until September.

UEFA just made an anouncement that they will begin Champions League (season long tournament with best teams in the leagues mentioned above) and Europa League (2nd tier teams not in Champions League) soon and fan attendance is to be determined:

https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/06/17/champions-league-rescheduled-lisbon-final-eight-tournament

 

[forensicbuzz]

The more that get it, the sooner its over.

Jury is still out on that.

 

[WreckinGT]

if a parent is concerned about this then they should just forbid their child to play. The odds on dying of the virus are less than a player dying from a broken neck on a block or tackle. So why ever let them participate anyway.

Go Jackets!

The parents should crush the hopes and dreams of their children because they are frustrated that the NCAA can’t come up with consistent guidelines to protect everyone and keep a level playing field?

 

[TechCubed]

People viewing this in the vacuum as if college athletes can be isolated. If the virus spreads among a team, there's a very good chance that most, if not all, will recover just fine. However, what if that athlete spreads it to classmate, professor, assistant coach, support staff or a parent? What if a death was traced back to an outbreak at Clemson, Kansas State, etc?

The pro sports have a lot of money to throw at creating "bubbles" or testing/treating aggressively. That's not the case in college sports.

 

[orientalnc]

I wonder how many Mich State fans went to this bar and whether it changes the picture at all.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/06/27/...-harpers/index.html?__twitter_impression=true

 

[Techster]

I wonder how many Mich State fans went to this bar and whether it changes the picture at all.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/06/27/...-harpers/index.html?__twitter_impression=true

Sports bars in college towns have been centers of super spreading among teams. That would be the first thing I told SAs...those bars are off limits.

 

[Jerry the Jacket]

Just some thoughts on this. First I am not sure if these Covid19 numbers are for US, Worldwide or just England/Wales but they do not account for the physical condition of those who were hospitalized/died. Were they already compromised from a health standpoint? The quick google search on football related deaths I did stated 42 young men died from football related deaths between 2015 and 2017. This represented participation at all levels of the sport throughout the US. That would equate to a large number of people but no where near the numbers represented in the Ramblin Red information (assuming it is world wide). So statistically you would need to know the exact data in both cases to derive the correct conclusion. So is it really a false statement?

Go Jackets!

I've haven't seen any stats that would support this statement. It's basically a false statement.

CDC just released a study through May 30th. In it 1,234 individuals 10-19 have been admitted to the hospital - 2.5% of all testing positive cases.
216 ended up in ICU (that's 0.4% of all testing positive cases). 33 died (o.1% of all covid positive cases).
Note that due to the data cutoff date those raw numbers probably need to be raised 75% to account for where we stand today.
Those are small numbers. But I don't know of any football players that have died from a broken neck much less 33.
Note that is conservative as the numbers for the 20-29 age group are much higher than the 10-19 age group - even if very small compared to the older populations.
In the 20-29 age group the numbers are 6,704 hospitalized (3.7%), 864 in ICU (0.5%), 273 deaths (0.1%)
Once again assume those numbers are roughly 75% higher today.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6924e2-H.pdf

I'm not arguing young people are at high risk, that is not the case, but to say that young people are more likely to die from a football injury is not likely to hold up to any scrutiny.

Interestingly, the avg age of death in the US is younger than it is in Europe. US has a much smaller share of its death coming from 80+ compared to europe while it has larger percentages coming from 40-69 yr olds. In each age bracket between 40-70 the US death % is a little less than twice that of Europe.

 

[bke1984]

Focusing on death alone might not be enough. There is at least some evidence for longer term health issues in even asymptomatic young people. Does no good to be cavalier about something we are just starting to understand.

Man you gotta stop with this stuff. The virus has literally been around for about five months in the US. How can there be any evidence of “long term” health issues when there hasn’t even been a long term. Is two months in recovery “long term?”

Deaths and hospitalizations are what we need to be using to decide policies in sport and everything else. As long as those two measures are under control then there should be no forced restrictions. Right now we are trending in the right direction and I think everything will ultimately be based on these two measures.

 

[RamblinRed]

Man you gotta stop with this stuff. The virus has literally been around for about five months in the US. How can there be any evidence of “long term” health issues when there hasn’t even been a long term. Is two months in recovery “long term?”

Deaths and hospitalizations are what we need to be using to decide policies in sport and everything else. As long as those two measures are under control then there should be no forced restrictions. Right now we are trending in the right direction and I think everything will ultimately be based on these two measures.

Deaths is actually the last metric that should be used to make decisions since it is the one with the greatest lag so gives you the least accurate representation of what is happening.
in terms of metrics to use the main ones would be cases, positive case % and hospitalizations. Every one of those has a lag, but the lag on deaths can be up to 28 days.
Here is a good blog explaining the lag in deaths and why it is so hard to forecast - reported deaths lag from actual infection date by up to 4 weeks -so deaths that you see being recorded now are do to activity from the end of May/beginning of June.
https://covidtracking.com/blog/why-...raphics-in-the-us-make-death-trends-harder-to

On a national level cases are skyrocketing, positive case percentages are trending up quickly (which shows that the increased case count are not primarily due to increased testing, but instead due to increased transmission) and hospitalizations are also up, at a smaller rate than cases, which would be expected

 

[RamblinRed]

Just some thoughts on this. First I am not sure if these Covid19 numbers are for US, Worldwide or just England/Wales but they do not account for the physical condition of those who were hospitalized/died. Were they already compromised from a health standpoint? The quick google search on football related deaths I did stated 42 young men died from football related deaths between 2015 and 2017. This represented participation at all levels of the sport throughout the US. That would equate to a large number of people but no where near the numbers represented in the Ramblin Red information (assuming it is world wide). So statistically you would need to know the exact data in both cases to derive the correct conclusion. So is it really a false statement?

Go Jackets!

At the NCAA level (all levels from Div 1 on down) - 33 football players died between 2000 and 2016. 27 of them were classified as non-traumatic deaths (ie. they did not die due to being hit - almost all the deaths occurred in off-season conditioning - 8 in winter workouts, 6 in summer workouts, 10 in August workouts, 2 in September conditioning, 1 in November non-physical practice). 12 due to exertional collapse associated with sickle cell trait, 9 due to sudden cardiac death, 5 due to exertional heat stroke and 1 due to Asthma.
Back in the early-to-mid 1970's an avg of 30 college football players died a year due to traumatic head or neck injury. In 1976 NCAA passed the no spearing rule. Deaths reduced by over 50% within the first year and within 5 years there were less than 1 death per year due to traumatic injury. Right now it is about 1 traumatic death every 3 years for players at all NCAA levels.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ar...al Collegiate,football players die per season.
FWIW only one of the 9 deaths due to sickle cell trait has occured since 2010 after NCAA implemented procedures mandating testing for sickle-cell trait.
Also interestingly, the almost all of the non-traumatic deaths have occurred at the Div 1 level, of the 6 traumatic injuries 4 have occurred at the Div 1 level and 2 at a level below Division.

In the CDC study I linked yesterday, roughly 1/4 of 10-19 and 20-29 yr olds who were hospitalized with COVID had underlying conditions, 1/3 of ICU patients in those age ranges had underlying conditions, and 40% of the 20-29 and 50% of the 10-19 yr old deaths had underlying conditions. The numbers are US numbers.
Deaths in both the 10-19 and 20-29 age groups are 0.1%. (one out of every 1,000). Now we are probably only capturing 1/10 of cases to this point so that would put the rate at 0.01% - 1 out of 10,000. We are also not capturing all the deaths so if you assume the 50% excess death rate that gives you a 0.015% rate or about 1 out of every 6,666 people.
it's certainly no guarantee that a young man playing college football will die and the odds in just FBS would be a little over 50/50. The odds at least one player in some level of college football will die is fairly high. Probably north of 75-80%.

All of this to say you are considerably more likely as a college football player to die from COVID than playing football. I wouldn't argue for not playing football due to a player potentially dying, the odds probably wouldn't favor that. The argument for not playing football is the chance it spreads into non 18-21 yr old players and kills a higher percentage there. That would be more common among coaches, support staff and fans.

I'll close by adding that in some ways we do probably underestimate the risk of the players due to them being in 'great physical condition'. The Medical Director for the NFLPA pointed out that many football players even being in great physical condition are going to have underlying conditions that make them a higher risk (especially African-American players).