On Friday, news came around that Alabama’s football program had five players test positive for the coronavirus. At the time, this space acknowledged the reality that more programs would have players test positive, and that the programs’ responses would be telling as we evaluate the likelihood of college sports returning this August.
Frankly, I didn’t really think about how soon the new positive tests would come in. As one should have expected, they came in quickly, because all these schools had athletes returning at the same time. Per CNN, we have positive tests across multiple sports at Arkansas State, Auburn, Texas Tech, Iowa, Iowa State, Marshall, and Oklahoma State. It’s unlikely these are the only schools that will see positive tests as their athletes return to campus. It’s unlikely these are the only schools that have seen positive tests. I don’t know the numbers well enough to estimate a share of schools that would have positive tests in their initial sampling (the one taken immediately upon the arrival of athletes), but one would assume at least dozens of schools will have this issue to deal with.
The response so far, from those schools for which we know the response, seems to be isolating the athletes who have tested positive. It’s unclear, and likely inconsistent, how often all athletes are to be tested, but at least for the time being, the numbers seem to be in the single digits at each school, and the response seems to be to proceed as planned, but with the athletes who’ve tested positive quarantined from the rest of campus. We’ll see if this response holds. We’ll start to get a better idea of how often athletes are being tested, and how consistent the approaches are across schools. We’ll likely see how quickly the virus spreads amongst athletic programs, and how seriously it affects the specific demographic of young, fit men and women. As the growing list of schools reminds us, all this learning might happen at a fairly quick pace.
