By anyone’s standards, this has been a rough year for college football as far as playing scheduled games. Perhaps that’s why the ACC doesn’t want to take chances as far as its basketball season. With COVID-19 cases forcing entire football teams to quarantine, the conference is hoping to avoid that for basketball.
For the 2020-21 season, the ACC will have members of all men’s and women’s basketball teams use wearable GPS devices for both games and practices. The idea is to measure exposure to players, staff and opponents who might be infectious. This would allow teams to make quarantine decisions for individuals instead of everybody, which is required without that data. At minimum, this will be required for all conference games.
Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner only sees good things coming out of this:
“Instead of saying ‘We’ve all got to shut down,’ — you don’t want to shut down — but maybe it’s two or three (players) and not an entire team. I think it’s a real game-changer. It’s a real positive step.”
With all of the games that go into a college basketball season, there is even less room for error compared to football. Forcing an entire team to quarantine for two weeks would take a big bite out of its schedule. It’s simply not an option. Props to the ACC for taking this step and improving its chances to have as complete as season as possible.