For Rick Hart, SMU’s sporting director, Thursday morning’s tension is part of his new normal.Despite the odds that at a fairly high time he will oppose this season’s game, Hart’s supervised football schedule begins its season this weekend as opposed to the state of Texas.
But in the overall COVID-19, Thursday is as important as Saturday, this is when the effects of polymer chain reaction (PCR) tests for coronavirus come into play, which will determine whether EMS can play or not.
Interestingly, this week’s trials have another meaning for the handful of systems that open the season: after a grueling six-month adventure that tested people’s ability to adapt and led to an ideological corner in the middle of a game based on unclear medical data and threat ability, SMU will at least begin.
“I still wouldn’t let myself say it out loud, ” said Hart.”But this morning, when I heard about the effects of our tests on Wednesday, I felt for the first time confident that we were going to play football.it was great.
But the return of school football this weekend is just a cause for celebration, more like the ephemeral relief of navigating a tight bend on an icy mountain pass, knowing there are many more to come.
The fact is that no one knows if the six Football Bowl Subdivision meetings that made the resolution to play this fall in the middle of a pandemic are taking an intelligent fitness resolution or whether their efforts to reach that point will result in a full season in Progress.
Similarly, it is highly unlikely to be said with certainty that Big Ten and Pac-12, who made the decision not to play this fall with the Mid-American Conference and Mountain West, made the right decision.they’ll watch remorselessly in October and November, or maybe they’ll look like the smartest kids in the room.
But no matter how it turns out, the fact that you got to this point with a list of nine games this weekend and a lot of others next weekend is a bit surreal.This is the word several directors have used in recent days to describe what it’s like to be a football season after what everyone has experienced in the last six months.
“There have been ups and downs every day,” said Arkansas state sports director Terry Mohajir, whose team plays in Memphis on Saturday.”There are so many things you check to navigate, you literally don’t have time to prevent and ask yourself, “Hey, we’re playing football.”
How will you feel? College football isn’t meant to be just a TV show; This is a birthday party on campus every Saturday that will now be moved to the salons.What happens when you remove the elements that contribute to both the environment and the game’s brilliing as well as the players and coaches and update them with a crowded noise?
No one has any idea, which contributes to the intrigue and tension that other people feel around college athletics.
And there are still so many unanswered questions that speak directly to the point that it’s divided school football for months: just because you can potentially succeed this season doesn’t mean it’s a smart idea.
It is the inescapable anguish that weighs on the game that returns to our lives, it is moderate to be satisfied to return to football and be satisfied by those who participate, while being deeply involved in what this fall’s game can mean.
Mohajir stated that there is nervousness in his industry, but is deeply convinced that his school is doing the right thing.
“I can see it in the face of our boys; they need to do it,” Mohajir said.”We monitored them, we did more aerobic assessments. And actually that was based on our knowledge and the population I serve, our men and women.on our campus they’re in a larger area here than if they weren’t.
“Will we have more positive evidence? Does this mean we’re going to play the rest of the games safely?No, it just means we’re looking to mitigate as many positives as possible.We can’t mitigate the threat to 100%.”
But what makes it more complicated to rationalize is that everything related to the execution of a football program in the midst of COVID-19 is invented on the fly while it is a virus that we do not yet know much about.
Earlier this week, Penn State’s director of sports medicine, Wayne Sebastianelli, told a local school board that between 30 and 35 percent of athletes tested positive for COVID-19 in the Big Ten had developed myocarditis, an inflammation of the central muscle.a point of knowledge, however, is an alarming point, even if schools are their center verification systems to stumble upon any problem.Because the virus is so new, doctors are still figuring out the long-term effects.
Therefore, it is not a smart thing that we have noticed that organizations almost once a week this summer interrupt educational sessions or educational camps due to epidemics. When almost a total organization of offensive linemen has to be quarantined as they did recently in LSU, it is not.collective immunity, plays with fire.
Those are the words of Colleen Kraft, a doctor of infectious diseases and a professor at Emory University School of Medicine, who spoke at a school sports convention where NCAA experts necessarily said we shouldn’t play football at school this fall.
And yet you’re going to play school football.It’s very hard to reconcile, but it’s there, for good or worse.
“When the game is over, there will probably be a brief relief,” Hart said.”But then the concentration will be on starting over next week.This is exactly what we’re at, but we weren’t sure if we’d see 3 September.We did and now we’re just hunting to get to September 4th.
Follow USA SPORTS columnist TODAY Dan Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken