NCAA coronavirus advisory panel: Amesh Adalja discusses how college football season is at risk
Playing 2020 football season ‘under intense discussion’ by coronavirus NCAA advisory panel
INDIANAPOLIS — The coronavirus pandemic has canceled NCAA spring athletics causing sports for the 2019-20 academic year to come to an end prematurely.
The coronavirus pandemic could also cause fall sports to be postponed or canceled.
Two doctors on the NCAA coronavirus advisory panel (Dr. William Schaffner, M.D., and Professor, Preventive Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Amesh Adalja, M.D., Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security) have discussed the pandemic and the college football season slated to kickoff August 29 with Vols Wire.
“There are some issues with contact sports that need to be addressed,” Adalja said.
Schaffner also discussed issues with contact sports and the reality of not having a college football season in 2020.
“I can tell you, it is a subject that is under intense discussion,” Schaffner said. “In fact, there is question of how much recruiting should go on, whether there should be summer practices and all of those issues. The NCAA advisory panel on the coronavirus is discussing those issues as we speak.”
Former Northern Illinois head coach Joe Novak currently serves on the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions.
Novak discussed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and how it should be looked at closely before the 2020 college football season is considered feasible to be played.
“It is really up in the air right now,” Novak told Vols Wire of the 2020 college football season. “It is, obviously, such a unique situation. Nobody really has anything to look back on and use as a point of reference. We are going to make sure we do right by these kids.”
If the 2020 college football season reaches a point of becoming feasible to be played, a transition period is needed for players to go through a training camp and prepare for competition.
Novak believes student-athletes will do as much as they can to workout during times of social distancing and mandates to shelter at home.
“I think most of these kids are going to do a good job of working out and staying in shape because that is the way they are these days,” Novak said. “Coaches are still going to need a period of time to work with them before we try and play games. I just think we have to wait and see when things tone down and there is also the fear of it kicking back up again, as they say. It is just an unknown situation.
“I do not think we can just make any decisions right now. We will just have to wait, but if we get to a point, at the end of June, and say okay and everything is good, we still need a good eight weeks in everything – to get them back, get them working and all that stuff. It is just up in the air.”
Schaffner can see the coronavirus pandemic start to diminish during the summer with warm weather, but he also views COVID-19 with the capability of returning during the fall and winter.
Adalja also anticipates COVID-19 returning.
“I fully anticipate that this will be back in the fall season just like other coronaviruses and other respiratory viruses that have winter season dominance,” he said.
Returning to the practice field or game field too early is something Novak wants to avoid.
“The last thing we need to do, if it starts to come back, is to have 100,000 people in stands next to each other, kids in the locker rooms together,” Novak said. “It is just an unknown thing, again, just have to play it by ear and go a month at a time and see where we are at — we just have to be smart.”
The former Northern Illinois head coach also mentioned that “you are talking with the right folks when you are talking with the doctors.”
“As a coach, when the trainer came and tapped me on the shoulder, I listened to what they said and that is the way we went,” he said. “If they said a player could not play, he did not play. If they said he needed time off, then he took time off.
“We are not doctors, we are coaches and we want to go, but obviously the number one concern is the health of these kids. To lose one and you will never forgive yourself, so you do not want to do that.”