Several national media outlets, including ESPN and Sports Illustrated, are reporting that conversations about canceling all fall sports for Division I of the NCAA are heating up. The conversations come in the wake of the continuing global coronavirus.
Last week, the NCAA gave each of their 3 divisions until August 21 to make a decision about whether to hold championships in fall sports in 2020. Division II and Division III quickly canceled after that mandate, but Division I has not yet made a decision. While the Division II and Division III decisions only specifically relate to championships, most of the schools in those divisions have canceled or postponed their entire fall seasons anyway.
Most of the conversation about canceling Division I fall sports initiated with the Big Ten Conference. Several outlets are reporting that the Big Ten presidents, after a meeting on Saturday, are leaning toward canceling the fall sports season. They have reportedly reached out to university presidents and chancellors from the other Power 5 conferences, the ACC, Big 12, Pac-12, and SEC, to see if those leagues would follow suit if the Big Ten were to cancel.
ESPN says that “a vast majority” of Big Ten presidents have said that they would vote to postpone football season until the spring.
While some athletes are fighting to keep the season on track, including most visibly Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence, one of the most visible players in college football, there is building momentum to cancel or postpone the fall 2020 season that some have described as “inevitable” at this point.
Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde and Ross Dellenger are reporting that the decision to postpone fall sports until 2021 is “expected” at this point. Among the new information that appears to have swayed the tide in the conversation is evidence that COVID-19, in a small percentage of infected patients, leaves behind scars in the heart muscle that can have serious long-term effects.
The fall sports season of the NCAA includes one aquatic sport, men’s water polo, as part of 8 at the Division I level. Also included are football, women’s field hockey, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s soccer, and women’s volleyball.
The ramifications from the loss of football revenue, and in some cases profitable women’s volleyball programs, will have an inevitable ripple effect to other sports, including swimming & diving. Exactly how that will manifest remains to be seen. If the postponement allows for football to happen in the spring with crowds, in the event of an effective vaccine being ready for widespread distribution by then, the delay could actually be a net-positive financially.
Last week, the Mid-American Conference became the first conference in the FBS, the top level of college football, to cancel its fall 2020 athletics season.
#wewanttoplay is trending:
https://247sports.com/college/florida-state/Article/FSU-Football-Andrew-Boselli-speaks-out-in-support-of-college-football-season-WeWantToPlay-150064081/Amp/?__twitter_impression=true
You do realize that the safety standards and the opt-out/retain eligibility acknowledge they demand mean that they view a very real health risk. This runs completely counter to the snake oil you’ve been selling, so I guess you’ve changed your mind. Don’t be fooled either that the demands are really a pretext for a College Football Players Association to collective bargain the NCAA for pay-for-play. It’s not just passion for the sport.
QUESTION: How can you tell the difference between a real scientist and a politician wearing a white coat? ANSWER: Have them pronounce the word “unionized.”
Took me a second to find my inner “scientist.” Good one
Yes to unions if they actually focused on what their charter was, no to Unions when they become political and also overreach to the point where they jeopardize the underlying institutions financial viability. Read on on the UAW and all the wonderful things the union did for GM. These student athletes proposing to unionize is absurd.
All college sports are going down this year. Let’s be realistic
Yep. They’ll be some opening colleges that will close and go online too.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that liberal education institutions would throw in the towel even at their own peril.
Shut it all down. Let’s actually do this correctly (like New Zealand) otherwise we’re going to be here again on August 2021 asking for redshirtcoronayear2
So you compare New Zealand, an island country with an advanced health system, total population of 5 millions, to USA total population of 330 millions with about 15 millions illegal immigrants? USA cannot even control illegal immigration on its southern border and you talk about shut it down correctly like New Zealand?
Agreed Tomek. The USA shouldn’t be treated like one country for the sake of the epidemic. The northeast epidemic is over (herd immunity). Sun Belt is close to over (studying hospitalizations), Midwest May still see some embers.
New Zealand comparison is totally unrealistic. Comparison to Europe much more realistic.
Hard lockdowns will never work for a variety of reasons here. I know social media is telling you that’s what needed but it will just contribute to more pain and suffering.
Thank you, O Font of Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Wisdom. I mean swim coach.
What is your background that enables you to weigh in on this since you took a shot at the coach for having an opinion? I know you work at a hospital, but are you a doctor and if so what kind?
MD. In addition to being a critical care specialist, 30 years of funded NIH research as a PI.
Only experts should have an opinion on anything.
The court of public opinion should never decide anything.
We should all be specialists only and always stay in our own lanes.
What a load of bunk. Herd immunity isn’t reached for this disease until well over 50% of the population has had it. No state in the US has even had 5% of its population test positive.
Again, you have gotten a lot of upvotes but 50% herd immunity is a number that was thrown around in March. Due to T cells that number could be as low as 15-20%. Even Fauci’s boss is acknowledging the role of T cell immunity.
You’re also wrong on your 5%. Check out some of the seroprevalence studies in New York or Boston.
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/07/28/immune-t-cells-may-offer-lasting-protection-against-covid-19/
It been mitigated in the Northeast because there was an actual shut down here order by actual leaders who didn’t care what people like you think. Also, EVERYONE wears masks. Everyone. But it could very easily flare up again. We all hope it won’t, but it is certainly not “over” as you put it, and certainly not because of herd immunity.
If you call “been mitigated” killing off the most vulnerable of the population, then sure, I suppose that worked in the NE
I mean “mitigated” in that the curve flattened and has stay relatively flat since June. CT/NJ slowly opening.
No. It’s been mitigated because they are closing in on herd immunity.
Of course, politicians will never admit this. Then their citizens will begin to question why the politicians and complicit media put them through so much unnecessary pain and suffering.
It would be major cognitive dissonance to suggest the harsh lockdowns in New York, New Jersey or Italy took 60 days to take effect and yield positive results.
I am also smarter than Nikola Tesla and Leonardo De Vinci combined, but they will never admit it.
That’s the PSYCHO in dad talking there 🙂
There is no herd immunity in CT. There are 45000 cases overall with a population of over 3 million. which is about 1.5 %. CT is in a good place because the governor did it the right way and opened cautiously and was not afraid to expect masks and social distancing and was not afraid to tell the bars they could not open yet. A cohesive national response would have been preferable, but that did not happen.
I’m sorry, but somebody has to push back on this ridiculous narrative that the northeast handled Covid well. CT currently has 1242 deaths per million of population. That’s just out of medal contention in the US, coming in behind NJ, NY and MA. Adjusted for population, that’s more than any other country in the world. Hell, it’s twice that of Sweden, and Sweden never locked down, didn’t impose mask mandates, and never shut down schools. Know what the 7 day moving average of deaths per day in Sweden is? ZERO! CT is 2. Please knock it off with this nonsense that the Northeast handled Covid well.
No one is saying it was not bad for awhile. However, when it became obvious that there was not going to be any comprehensive national response, the governor of CT did a damn good job. Thus the state is cautiously reopening. There were actually just 3 days in a row with zero deaths from Covid and the transmission rate has been at or under 1% for over a month, and hospitalizations once at 2000 are now in the 50s. When I see states that still have transmission rates in the 10-20% range, I cringe. It is way too late in the epidemic for this to be happening.
Last time on this, CT with a rolling 7 day avg of 2 means 14 deaths in a week. That is pretty good, not perfect, but considering there were 83 or so in Florida yesterday alone, pretty darn solid.
This is an absurd narrative. All these things you claim « to have done right » – Sweden did none of. No lockdowns, no mask mandates, no school closures, and yet you still managed to kill your citizens at a rate double that of Sweden’s. CT has one of the worse records on the books in the entire world. I don’t know how to put this politely, but CT totally sh#* the bed on its Covid response.
Another thing you fail to consider is that for every positive case, the CDC estimates there are another 10 that go undetected. There are a number of studies that show that multiple might actually be much higher. So those 45,000 positive cases are probably more like 450,000 or more.
Herd immunity is much more plausible than anything your governor did. Lockdown are not working in places that haven’t spiked. See CA. https://www.kare11.com/amp/article/news/health/coronavirus/do-some-people-have-preexisting-immunity-to-the-coronavirus/89-b01b53a7-2663-4854-9a59-342d9c2dc6d6
Hard lockdowns have been proven to not work, especially with this virus.
Not true at all.
“The lockdown, one of the social isolation restrictions, has been observed to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic, and showed that the spread of the virus can be significantly reduced by this preventive restriction in this study.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293850/
Hasn’t California been in some form of a lockdown this entire time? A lockdown works fine for those of us who can work remotely, but not everyone enjoys that same level of freedom.
Details have never mattered in the slightest. Just keep projecting the over and you’ll be correct. In recent weeks it’s been ridiculous when the Canes have been sending me daily emails regarding the upcoming football schedule, and particulars regarding the team. Meanwhile I’ve been thinking…what schedule?…what team? I just hope Tokyo 2021 can happen. I always argued it should have been 2022.
2022 woud require many requalifications . For example Gymnastics began theirs Oct 2018. There are skills & peaks attuned to Olympic cycles in many sports & athletes cannot be expected to hold on for 3.7 years. Biles won’t make it .
Simone Biles is so far ahead of the game that (if nothing else) she could win vault for potentially the next three Olympiads. See: Oksana Chusovitina.
I don’t know if I would go so far to say Biles could win vault for the next three Olympiads, but she is incredibly far ahead of the game at the moment. She made huge mistakes in the all-around at both the 2018 and 2019 gymnastics world championships and still came out on top by a significant margin, so I would say that it’s safe to say she will still make it. She could downgrade her routines massively and still win, yet she has continued to upgrade them and continues to increase the gap between her and the rest of the world.
The closest comparison I could make to swimming is that she’s a sort of an Adam Peaty right… Read more »
To both Aqua & Sophie . Biles admits she has been struggling to get to 2020 . She won’t make it for mental health reasons.
I’m saving my bets for Paris 2024.
Realistically would swim practices formally start 2nd semester if there is a season?
Swimming is a winter sport that starts in the fall…
Canceling D1 football would be very sad. Especially for the loss of revenue that would have a disastrous domino effect on the minor sports — especially swimming. Nothing in life is without risks. I’d at least like the Power 5 try to “bubblify” the teams for a month and to see if that might work.
The article said “in a small percentage of infected patients, it leaves behind scars in the heart muscle that can have serious long-term effects.” Just how small a percentage? 0.0002%? Remember, we’re talking about 19 year olds in top tip physical shape, not 83 year olds with comorbidities in assisted living centers. Give ‘em a chance to try to salvage at least part of… Read more »
According to JAMA Cardiology, 78% of Covid patients show heart abnormalities 10 weeks after the actual illness is gone. This includes otherwise healthy patients.
The number with scarring is very very low — under 1% — but clearly, if 10 weeks out, the heart isn’t back to normal, the health of a football player is not to be toyed with for a Fall season. Too much is unknown.
Isn’t myocarditis fairly common in patients with severe influenza infections as well?
Pneumonia as well.
The published rate is less than 10%. So “fairly common” only in that there are so many flu cases.
With sever influenza, yes, but weirdly it’s showing up with even mild or no-symptom cases of Covid. It seems to do something to the heart, and we don’t know how quickly or slowly the effect goes away.
How to “bubblify” student-athletes? The rest of the school has in-person classes, but the athletes (who feel they are basically being used anyway) have online only? The cost would be ridiculous. And then what — you say it’s so serious you have to be in a bubble but hey go play in front of 70,000 people bunched together screaming? It’s just not going to work. And you still really don’t understand that kids in this age group are dying. To characterize the 162,000 deaths as “83-year-olds with comorbidities in assisted living centers” is just ignorant of the facts. Do better.
I can tell you 1. The Boston Red Sox pitcher Edwin Rodriguez, age 27, had COVID during the 1st Spring Training and is now out for the year with a heart ailment that he did not have previously. He is expected to recover, but is not able to play now.
Michael Ojo, former FSU basketball player (age 25) died 3 days ago in Belgrade, Serbia, during a practice, of heart attack. He just recovered from coronavirus. Might be unrelated, but too close not to suspect at least.
I don’t know if being a regular student really applies here. Is anything about life during covid regular?
Sad face
The word of the week ahead: carnage. This is going to get ugly.
how many swim teams go down
https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/
Hopefully none, but I’d worry most about schools that were barely breaking even during “normal” times.
A few perhaps but understand, outside of the power 5, football is not a money maker (especially if indirects are fully allocated). Swimming is there because of Title IX and because it makes the investment in football more palatable. This myth pervades college athletics at the behest of alumni.