Although this happened in the NFL, it may become more apparent in college football. Everyone remembers when they were 19, 20 and 21. It is very tough going a stretch without a hookup. 
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I think any plan that relies on 18-29 year olds doing the safe conservative thing is doomed to fail.
The argument for playing that resonates with me is these kids are not going to be any safer if they donât play. So the player safety argument rings a little hollow. Now the coaches safety and the âwe donât want to get in a law suitâ argument still holds water with me.
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The problem with this argument is that once COVID gets in the football environment itâs potentially going to spread faster than just about anywhere else.
I for sure think kids will behave better with the structure of football keeping them honest by taking better precautions to limit potential exposure outside of football and at the moment support playing because of that. But it needs to be a lot better than they would otherwise to justify playing under that rationale. There will of course be slip ups but they need to be infrequent. Or there needs to be even more constant testing.
Why are so many posters looking for ways playing football wonât work. It seems like looking for ways it would work would be more productive.
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I believe we all hope it works but we donât have too much faith that 18-22 years olds will have enough self discipline to avoid bars, parties and hookups.
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It has been documented that teens and young people in the 20-30 year old sector are partying together and socializing in groups. This is happening without sports. So, why it is more dangerous for kids playing sports?
My question is, why are people in a football stadium, with seating restuctured and reduced for social distancing, more at risk than the patrons of WalMart, HEB, Kroger, Home Depot, etc? These stores have all kinds of signs telling people to stay 6 feet apart; but it has been my experience that the distancing is not enforced. In fact, the stores Iâve been in are about the same as always, though depending on the time one visits, the numbers will vary â just like pre-COVID.
Iâm not debating any specific issue pertaining to the virus that should be on the Satellite category. Iâm just stating that I hope our players will make wise decisions by not putting themselves at risk of the virus when they are outside the parameters of football.
I just walked my dog around the park.
All the teenagers are playing basketball and all the little kids are on the jungle gyms. Adults are walking around the park getting their cardio in.
Why canât these kids play football?
My daughterâs gymnastics gym opened in June. Before I say it, I need to knock on wood. All the coaches are masked up and following protocols but the kids are pretty much together. No masks, nothing for the gymnasts, they just canât wear them effectively and do their sport, plus they move from station to station 5 hours a day and inside. Absolutely no issues to date.
She played in 15 golf tournaments this summer but had to play by COVID golf rules outside and wear masks when they entered the club house. In South Texas, in any given week this summer, there are over 80 junior golf tournaments per weeks (that is 800 junior golf tournaments over the course of June through early August). No issues reported from my knowledge across any of the golf leagues with transmissions occurring among the junior golfers. Only one incident across greater Houston for the First Tee and it occurred where a 15 year-old was infected outside of class and brought it to class with nobody else being infected.
I wasnât concerned about the golf and their protocols, I have been a bit concerned about the gym and the fellow gymnasts. That experience has given me far more positive hope regarding schools, at least at the younger ages to mid-teens. I know the data shows higher infections starting in the early 20s.
For what Ron pointed out, it has been my concern all along with my thinking that football would need to go into the bubble, not because of the sport and its activities, but because student athletes interacting with the general public would infect teams. It is the reason why the Marlins screwed themselves.
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This might not be a very popular opinion (TBH I havenât thought it through all the way), have the conferences thought about doing a shorter schedule, with a bye week after every game? Wouldnât that allow teams to remain healthy, get more testing done, and mitigate the spread of the virus?
Other than a longer season, what would be a big draw back to doing this? Just an idea.
Spoke with a college coach this week. His opinion âweâll play 2 or 3 and see how it goesâ
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I donât think what we discuss on this message board will have an impact in either direction.
With respect to the people who actually are making this decision, in terms of coming up with a good plan and/or making the right decision on whether or not to play, hopefully they are listening to both naysayers and bubbly optimists to help find issues they may not really be considering and justifications they may not also be considering.
Itâs bound to happen. If a player is diagnosed with COVID-19 during the season, does the entire team and coaches quarantine for 2 weeks, forfeiting 1 or 2 games? Do we know what our teamâs strategy is?
Sounds right. They will learn quite a bit from those games. If they need to delay the season a period of time after learning from those games theyâll do it and if they need to move to the spring, they can do that also.
I would rather have them out there learning how to live with it than not. To me, there are only two strategy options. 1. Learning to live with it as they go for the fall and learn from their esperience and adjust and apply as they go; or 2. Re-group and plan for the winter/spring while learning from the MLB, NBA, and most importantly the NFL. What should not be an option is cancelling 2020/2021 off the map for that would be economically disasterous for all college sports and would impact ADs for years to come financially and impact the current and future student athletes over the next decade and primarily on the scholarship front and the number of sports and teams available for our student athletes.
Hopefully the entire team shouldnât have to quarantine. Thatâs why I wonder if it would be useful to allow a bye week between every game in order to see whoâs positive and isolate them quickly. It would be no fun if 30 players tested positive right before a game. A bye week would allow them to come back by the next game, and ensure that no teams are missing a ton of guys out of their rosters. Of course this is assuming they were infected the Saturday of the game the last game.
Ron - they are only quarantining the player infected and possibly the pod they are assigned if evidence shows they need too. It is one reasons so many teams are dividing up into small pods so they minimize impact to the greater team. But even so, it could wipe out a unit, like the OL, or LBs, or DBs, WRs, etc.
There are a ton of baseball tournaments and even one off games being played right now. I have at least a dozen friends with kids playing most weekends.
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Ah, pods. I guess I havenât read enough posts but it sounds like they have a good strategy.
This is why Iâm just going to savor every minute of college football I can get.
This is a funny take on this threadâs original post.
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