Since we last spoke on this website about the coronavirus and college sports, there have been two new significant developments. Neither is surprising. Neither is positive. One points towards college football occurring as planned. The other is more ambiguous. One is enlightening. The other is merely interesting.
The first:
Per The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio State football players had to sign an “acknowledgment of risk waiver” upon returning to campus for voluntary workouts. The waiver appears intended to absolve Ohio State of legal responsibility for any of its players contracting COVID-19 while representing the university.
What it means:
It’s possible Ohio State isn’t alone in this, and many of us had already theorized about such a waiver existing prior to this news confirming its existence in Columbus. The fact that The Dispatch got a hold of the document through a public records request does point towards the possibility that Ohio State was unique in this approach (presumably, journalists focused on other schools have filed similar requests, yet we haven’t heard of other waivers), but it’s difficult to believe that, given that Ohio State was able to pull off the signing and the publicizing of the signing without much backlash. It’s still abundantly unclear, of course, whether universities would bear any legal risk in the first place. If universities don’t bear legal risk, or are getting these waivers signed so as to make them not responsible, it does point towards sports being played this fall, but it’s hard to call this “good news” without questioning oneself.
The second:
Texas announced today that 23 of its football players are self-isolating right now. 13 have positive tests or are presumed positive. 10 have been identified through contact tracing but aren’t showing symptoms. Two of the 13 confirmed cases tested positive last week, when 58 players came back to campus and were pre-emptively tested. Four separate players have tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies.
What it means:
It isn’t surprising, but the number is high, and given the “presumed positive” report, it sounds like some of the 13 confirmed cases were confirmed without a test, implying Texas isn’t testing everybody routinely, which in turn implies the possibility that 13 football players are displaying symptoms, which is an even bigger number than just 13 positive tests. This isn’t necessarily the case—it’s possible there was just some confusion with the wording, and that Texas is regularly testing all its athletes—but it, like the outlining of the Houston situation last week, is a reminder that schools aren’t approaching this uniformly, and do not seem to be testing as often as, say, the NBA has said it will test.
The antibodies piece of this, along with the sheer quantity of confirmed cases, does raise the possibility of herd immunity occurring within a team, but given that a team is not actually an isolated society, this possibility seems somewhat foolish to hope on without the blessing an epidemiologist who’s been fully briefed on the day-to-day routines of a college football team. Most importantly, as always, the hope is for full recoveries from all infected, but if you’re looking for a reason to think college football will happen this fall, there’s at least something of a spin zone here in which it’s possible whole teams could catch the virus in the next few weeks and be immune by August. Again, though, you don’t want to be the person hoping people will get sick.
