How are we going to get college football training camp started? How are we going to have an on-ramp to college football in the state of California, which contains four of the Pac-12’s teams (one-third of the league membership)?
Answers to these burning questions were provided — not complete answers, but certainly substantial improvements — by the State of California on Friday afternoon. Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News obtained COVID-19-related health and safety guidelines provided by the state which affect USC and UCLA in Los Angeles County, plus Stanford in Santa Clara County and California in the City of Berkeley.
These guidelines are part of a 34-page health and safety plan for secondary and higher education in the state. The 34-page document contains a more specific 10-page plan for collegiate athletics, starting on page 24.
You can view the document here.
A short excerpt of the state guidelines obtained by Wilner:
“All decisions about following this guidance should be made in collaboration with local public health officials and other authorities.
“Implementation of this guidance should be tailored for each setting, including adequate consideration of programs operating at each institution and the needs of student-athletes and workers.
“Administrators should engage relevant stakeholders— including student-athletes, their families, staff and labor partners in the school community—to formulate and implement plans.”
One obvious point to make about these guidelines is that while the county and city officials will need to approve them in order for USC, UCLA, Stanford, and Cal to begin training camp in mid-August and then play games starting in late September, there might not have to be 100-percent uniformity among the four schools or with the state guidelines. Some degree of local discretion might enter the picture; how much is the big question, something you are surely wondering about.
That tension between state government and county or city government — an obvious structural complication in California and every other American state or territory in this pandemic — will need to be resolved in a productive way over the next several weeks.
Stay tuned for more news and analysis as events warrant.