How do universities ensure fan and player safety during COVID, while still preserving a season and long time rivalries?
I'm a huge college football fan and I'm very worried that the season won't happen this year. Many conferences have decided to only play their games within conference this year.
As a Clemson grad, not having Clemson vs. South Carolina this year would leave a huge hole.
Tigers vs. Gamecocks!
What measures can colleges and universities take that would actually be effective? What about the NCAA?
Answers ( 1 )
Every country in the world who has gotten COVID-19 under control has done so the same way: by limiting the methods by which is spreads. This means avoiding large crowds, minimizing time spent indoors with people you don't already live with, and above all, wearing a mask to prevent people who are contagious (whether they realize it or not -- that is, whether they are symptomatic or not) from spreading it to other people. There is no cure, there's barely even a reasonable treatment so far. All we can do is reduce the spread.
The good news is that reducing the spread is enough! If each person who has COVID-19 spreads it -- on average -- to less than one other person, the entire freaking pandemic goes away. The lower that spread is, the faster it vanishes. Problem is, the natural rate of spread is something like 2.0 or 3.0 new people infected, not 1. So it's hard to stop.
But other countries have done it. They do it by putting disease-spread-prevention tactics into place, NATIONWIDE. They've restarted soccer in England, Spain, and Italy, because they've pretty much conquered the disease:
This stands in contrast to the unmitigated shit-show that is the United States:
I personally think it's a huge mistake to restart the baseball and basketball seasons, because people are going to get sick as a result and we will make COVID-19 worse in America. (Hockey is okay to start -- but that's because they're doing it all in Canada, where -- surprise! -- their graph looks like Europe's graphs.)
And so American sports should do what American politicians (and let's be honest, it's just Republicans) are unwilling to do: set a good example for the American people. Make the point that they're willing to listen to science and make the unpleasant decision to cancel sports seasons until things are better. Show up at a press conference wearing a damn mask, and tell everyone "We'll restart the season when you are all wearing masks consistently enough that the pandemic is under control."
But this is American, and people love their sports (and the billionaires love the money that the sports bring them) more than they love their health. So that's probably not going to happen. You'll get your Clemson vs. South Carolina and the graph of new cases in South Carolina will continue to grow . . .
All data from worldometers.info, as of July 19, 2020.