NCAA doctor believes college football can be played safely

One of the doctors working with the NCAA, Brian Hainline, believes college football can be played safely.

The Big Ten continues to have more and more things happen that point to the league having prematurely postponed the fall football season. Testing will soon be much more affordable and provide results within a few minutes. High schools, youth sports — and most importantly — most other college football programs and leagues are forging ahead with the season.

And now, the NCAA’s leading doctor has just come out and expressed confidence in what the Power Five schools are doing to monitor and play safely.

“I work very closely with the SEC, Big 12, ACC and all of the autonomy five conferences,” Dr. Brian Hainline, a doctor who works for the NCAA, said Friday. “The final recommendations were exactly aligned with the NCAA decisions. So I’m highly confident, from a decision-making point of view, with regards to football.”

Now, that doesn’t mean playing a high-contact sport like football doesn’t come without risks. Hainline later expressed the nature of the risk/reward of playing college football, saying ultimately, the virus could throw things in turmoil.

“Nobody is denying any facts,” continued Hainline. “Again, highly respected individuals are looking at the data. Some of it’s, you know, you take a risk if you do this and a risk if you don’t do that — the sort of tolerance you have in playing it out. Ultimately, the virus is going to decide.

But that’s the point in all of this really. Everyone knows the COVID-19 pandemic could make it difficult for programs or conferences to continue or play a game here or there without shutting things down because of an outbreak.

And instead of letting things play out like the SEC, ACC, and Big 12 are doing, the Big Ten just shut it all down to where it’s now hard to ramp back up again. And the more we see teams play at all levels safely, at least for now, it’s looking more and more like a knee-jerk reaction that could have simply waited.

Maybe the same decision is ultimately arrived at for the other teams and leagues, but what was the rush?

 

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