Coronavirus and Sports

A lot of the focus in the news regarding coronavirus and sports is when sports can restart. So I will start here. Of course not all sports are created equal. Football, America’s most popular sport, is a contact sport and impossible to play six feet apart while social distancing.

We all want things to return to normal this fall, but with cases surging nationwide, many, including myself question whether this is feasible. I want nothing more than the college athletes I care for to return and have a great year. I also personally would love to go up to my alma mater for a game to see the fall colors, old friends, and reminisce. However, I know that COVID -19 is a serious virus. It spreads easily. As many will point out many who have it are asymptotic or have mild illness. On the flip side, it has already killed over 130,000 Americans in 6 months and will kill more before we get a handle on it. Some of those it has killed are young, healthy people with their lives ahead of them. For the lucky people who survive a serious illness there are chronic potentially life long repercussions of requiring ICU level care. They will often require lengthly rehab and may have side effects from their life saving treatment. I will go into the potential long term complications of COVID on athletes in a different article.

COVID has sent an unprecedented disruption into sports. Even during hard times in our history we have turned to sports as a morale booster. While sporting events were disrupted for 1918 Spanish influenza, WWI, WWII, and to a lesser extent 9/11, a disruption to this extent is really unprecedented. The popularity of the women’s baseball league in WWII showed that sports were important in our life, even when it was not able to be consumed in the ways that were traditionally popular. (I honestly think that my dogs and I need to be characters from A League of Their Own this year for our likely socially distanced Halloween this year).

For those following closely, the past weeks have brought into contrast the dire situation of college football: college students who socialize and play a high contact sport will likely not be able to play without significant outbreaks. You cannot isolate college students like you can professional athletes. Yet no team wanted to be the first to admit this fact until recently. Football is a major cash cow for universities that are already strapped for funds due to COVID. However, just this past week we have seen the Ivy League cancel it’s fall sports season. We have seen other schools plan for a conference only schedule and other conferences consider playing fall sports in the spring. I think we are likely to see other conferences follow suit and make changes in the upcoming weeks.

“It’s been kind of like Santa Claus and the Easter bunny,…You kind of knew they didn’t exist, and then finally you were told.”

Buddy Teevens, Head coach for Dartmouth on how the reality of COVID and football slowly was elucidated even as no one wanted to talk about the reality.

On the professional and NCAA side returning athletes have been tested. Some teams have had high numbers of athletes turn up positive. Teams have had to close training sites due to outbreaks on their teams. It is likely that these early outbreaks will not be the only ones to occur if sports continue throughout the pandemic. If they do return there is questions of whether they will be able to complete the season.

Some questions leagues, athletes, and the American public must consider are: What is best to do if an outbreak occurs within a league or team? Are sports competitions worth the very real possibility that an athlete, coach, support staff end up in the ICU or worse die? Is there a different level of risk accepted for professional sports where everyone is getting paid to participate vs. NCAA sports where athletes are students and do not get monetary compensation for their participation? How do the athletes themselves feel about returning? How do their families?

Even without fans, there are still many people who come together from different areas for a professional and collegiate sports competition. Coaches, managers, athletic trainers, team physicians, cameraman, referees, officials and more are present beyond the athletes. Risk factors such as obesity, diabetes, older age would be quite common in this population. Athletes themselves may have some of these risk factors as well. As cases are surging, some cities have reported that a majority of their new infections and hospitalizations are in the younger and healthier populations. It would be naive to think that athletes and sports staff are in some way immune to COVID.

In order to start the return to sports, aggressive planning was undertaken by sports medicine professionals who care for these athletes. Many who want sports to resume do not think about the costs and manpower required. Frequent testing, monitoring for symptoms, additional cleaning, contact tracing, and appropriately isolating athletes will cost money. It also requires more time from the staff. Some estimate that this will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per team per season.

Another issue that has received some media attention throughout the pandemic is resource allocation. Some areas of the United States still are running short on the current demand for both tests and PPE. Even if teams are paying for their own equipment, is it fair that athletes get frequent tests with a fast turn around, when members of the community cannot get tests or if medical professionals have to reuse their PPE. A recent article in The Athletic highlighted this today:https://theathletic.com/1924081/2020/07/12/while-mls-gets-quick-covid-19-test-results-general-public-faces-long-delays/

Youth Sports

A quick side note on the youth side. Youth sports is a $15 billion dollar business, leagues, hotels, multi-sport complex, and coaches rely on youth sports going on for income. Travel sports have resumed in parts of the country. While most youth sports have put into place guidelines for safer play, there is still risk to people traveling to different areas of the state or country. Additionally, there are reports of many youth sports leagues not following the recommended guidelines put forth or even the regulations of regional governments. With these concerns aside, with family and spectators at the tournament, it is difficult not to socialize or get close to one another and just because youth sports are currently allowed in parts of the country, it certainly does not mean it is safe. The plans that are being utilized for professional and division 1 NCAA sports would be cost and time prohibitive for youth sports. Thus if these issues are occurring at the professional and collegiate levels, they are likely to be occurring at the youth level which has less safeguards. Youth sports may be fueling spread without us even recognizing it. ( While not directly COVID related, some travel leagues went from no practice to attending tournaments with multiple games in a week. I would remiss not to put an additional side note that athletes should not go from very little activity to full on competition and tournaments. Youth sports medicine providers are seeing a large increase in overuse injuries due to this trend. Some of these injuries can be quite serious involving months away from sport and some athletes may be unable to return to their previous level of play).

Finally if you read this and still do not think that COVID is a problem for athletes, please read below for a first hand account from a high level athlete:

“It definitely shook me up a bit — it was very surreal, you know?… My biggest takeaway from this experience is that no matter how great of shape you are in physically, no matter what your age is, that you’re not immune from things like this.”

Von Miller, linebacker for Denver Broncos

Some additional reading on sports and the coronavirus:

A Lot of Athletes Seem to Have the Coronavirus. Here Are Some Reasons by Andrew Keh

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/sports/coronavirus-athletes-tested-positive.html

Op-Ed: COVID-19 is making the NCAA’s exploitation of student-athletes even more obvious By AZMATULLAH HUSSAINI AND JULES LIPOFFhttps://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-23/ncaa-athletes-coronavirus-colleges-pay

A college football season on the brink due to COVID-19 — and it’s time to say by Dave Hyde: https://www.bakersfield.com/ap/sports/dave-hyde-a-college-football-season-on-the-brink-due-to-covid-19-and-it/article_dc257c71-b0a7-5c50-a6e6-a0b8b84165b4.html

Op-Ed: COVID-19 is making the NCAA’s exploitation of student-athletes even more obvious By AZMATULLAH HUSSAINI AND JULES LIPOFFhttps://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-23/ncaa-athletes-coronavirus-colleges-pay

NCAA COVID Resources: http://www.ncaa.org/sport-science-institute/coronavirus-covid-19

ESPN latest news on NCAA sports: https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/29036650/the-coronavirus-college-sports-ncaa-reopening-plans-latest-news-program-cuts-more

The Aspen Institute Project Play has great resources for youth sports for safe play as well as COVID: https://www.aspenprojectplay.org

Please be on the lookout for my upcoming blog articles on how coronavirus may effect athletes themselves .