By Arthur L. Caplan and Lee H. Igel
The athletics meetings of Big Ten and Pac-12 schools have announced that they will not play football this fall due to fitness and protection issues due to the coronavirus pandemic. But his power five-mates, Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12 and Southeastern Conference, are still making plans to play. As many schools and universities prepare to return to school and the pandemic is over, it’s time to speak out against the immorality of letting student-athletes be the center of attention.
U.S. schools expected the summer to bring adjustments that could allow some academics to live and be informed on campus in the fall. But there has not been enough social estrangement, masking and evidence available. COVID-19 cases are on the rise, and that’s without academics registering in campus dorms, without students cramming into bars, billiard rooms and other clubs in local communities. Most schools are online completely remotely.
The stage has led top-establishment leaders to realize that having the fewest students, universities and staff on campus is essential to keep others healthy and safe. This is the case in the spaces of the country that are still hot spots. They consider this to be the right thing to do to weigh the balance between the expansion of virus transmission rates and the decline in finance. But not all school officials, sports directors, coaches, student-athletes and alumni agree with the sport, especially football.
Former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz says that “when they broke into Normandy, they knew there would be casualties, there would be risks.” This analogy of football to war surely doesn’t make sense. Dying to defeat Hitler is not the same as a dying student-athlete so his team can win the SEC championship.
Nick Saban, Alabama’s less deaf head coach, believes that his team’s protective measures and testing procedures for student-athletes make football amenities a safer position than anywhere else on campus. Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh insists that strict protocols within the football program, which have not resulted in positive testing during summer workouts, allow him to play the season. Dr. Cameron Wolfe, a Duke University infectious disease specialist who chairs the CCA Medical Advisory Group, says it is imaginable to “sufficiently mitigate the threat of taking COVID to the football field or education room to a point other than living as a student on campus.”
It is conceivable that sports groups manage situations on their premises in order to reduce the threat of exposure and the number of positive cases. Teams from the English Premier League, La Liga and Bundesliga in Europe have done so. So have one in the NBA, WNBA, NHL, MLS and NWSL staying in your bubbles. However, MLB was less certain to travel from a hot domain to a hot domain without a bubble.
University sports departments do not have the monetary and logistical resources to create the types of bubbles needed for sound education and safe competition. Even if the bubbles between student and athletes’ dormitories and team amenities could be established, limited exposure to campus and local communities would still create serious risk. And if the grounds and classrooms of schools can be free of COVID-19, traveling between cities to play and perhaps visiting local “attractions” of interest increases the likelihood of exposure and transmission, especially in the hot spots of the virus.
There is also an educational and ethical challenge in allowing student-athletes to travel. The few schools that offer face-to-face courses prevent teams of academics from going into the countryside, visiting sites, and reading abroad. If fitness and protection challenges don’t allow artistic elegance to be explored as much as a museum on campus, how can we justify letting the football team pass to an airport, hotel, bus and stadium in another location in the city, and the most dangerous? ?
One justification that does not pass in terms of precedence for student-athletes’ fitness would possibly be that gaming departments face old profit deficits without football. University of Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez said a season without the game can also leave his program alone with more than $100 million in success. This type of deficit would require monetary assistance from universities at a time when peak establishments face massive budget unrest only in their educational activities.
There is also the ethical factor of creating situations in which students-athletes may feel compelled to replay earlier than fitness citizens recommend. Athletes pride the property on being difficult enough to fight illness and injury. They should stay in the game, or at least look at the one they make, rather than threaten to waste their homework on someone else. Requiring academics to join this popular during a furious pandemic is, at best, a productive clash of interests and, at worst, negligence.
Medical science still doesn’t know enough about the long-term effects of COVID-19 on fitness for school football to be played safely this season. He knows, despite claims from President Donald Trump and the administrative adviser, Dr. Scott Atlas, that young and well-formed school athletes are probably not immune to symptoms such as cardiovascular disease, lung disorders and emotional distress. The unknowns are great, which justifies allowing fitness personnel with the right protective apparatus to review their lives if they are infected, but not to inspire young men to participate in trainings and games without masks in sight.
I’m sorry, Coach Holtz and Mr. President, times are neither a country at war nor normal. Coaches, AD, referees and directors deserve not to pretend otherwise. They have to turn off autumn football. The game can start next year. Students who may be in poor health or die playing now will have to be at the forefront of the minds of enthusiasts and those who care about school football.
The Big Ten and Pac-12 leaderships did the right thing in putting themselves among the conferences that have postponed their fall seasons. The ACC, Big 12, and SEC need to follow suit. Playing through now puts the health of student-athletes and everyone else on campus at serious risk.
Lee Igel strives to make other people better perceive the decisions that shape the gaming industry and its communities. He is an associate clinical professor at NYU Tisch
Lee Igel strives to make other people better perceive the decisions that shape the gaming industry and its communities. Mr. Ethics Division of the Langone Health Department of Population Health at NYU.