Not Solely a Question of When to Open Up, but Who Decides? And By What Guidelines?
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The Return of College Sports:
Not Solely a Question of When to Open Up, but Who Decides? And By What Guidelines?
When college athletics will reopen is the trendy, if not exhausting, question continuously debated this spring across university leadership teams, athletics departments, athletic conference offices, the NCAA national office, college fanbases and sports media alike. But who decides when to re-open college sports and by what guiding principles may be just as intriguing.
The question of who decides to reopen college athletics is a melded matter with bifurcation and layers.
First, there is decision-making to be done at the campus level. The call on when to reopen ultimately rests with presidents and chancellors (including input from their leadership teams and university Boards). That campus-level direction will be informed by a bullpen of experts and authorities. That decision-making assembly line will include federal (e.g., CDC), state, and local health officials determining when the frequency of COVID-19 positive tests have sufficiently trended downward for a period of time and concurrently assessing whether the community’s health care capacity is equipped for new, preventative measures in our everyday lives as well as the ability handle a second surge of positive COVID-19 cases.
Another input in the campus decision-making pipeline will be federal, state, and local government officials. Elected officials continue to be informed by their health care leadership to help determine actual protocols and conditions for reopening. Particular sway and authority rests with each state’s governors---a reality that implies there is not a national ‘on/off switch’ for a unison reopening of college campuses and their athletics programs.
Campus leadership will need to ensure their residence halls, classrooms, athletic facilities, offices, student common areas, food service stations and other spaces are enhanced with new protocols and safeguards (e.g., sanitizing stations; disposable masks). There are unquestionably other pivot points within campus leadership’s path toward deciding when and how its campus reopens. This includes guidance from a statewide university system that spots differentiatials in readiness amongst its campuses across the same state.
Then there is the national decision-making process. Although the NCAA would not be the entity to decide whether a member institution remains closed or reopens, it would decide, like it did this spring, on whether NCAA championships would be held, postponed, canceled, or modified (e.g., conducting competition with no fans).
In addition to the CDC, NIAID Director Fauci, and regional and local healthcare leaders serving as the current subject-matter experts, what healthcare leadership resource is guiding college sports’ return?
Enter the NCAA COVID-19 Advisory Panel.
In early March, the NCAA established a COVID-19 advisory panel of leading medical, public health and epidemiology experts along with NCAA member schools to guide its response to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease.
NCAA Chief Medical Officer Dr. Brian Hainline leads the group, which also includes:
Amesh Adalja, M.D. - Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security
Stephanie Chu, M.D. – Team physician, University of Colorado, Boulder; Member, NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports
Carlos del Rio, M.D. – Chair, Hubert Department of Global Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health
Colleen Kraft, M.D. – Associate chief medical officer, Emory University Hospital
Vivek Murthy, M.D. – 19th Surgeon General of the United States; Member, NCAA Board of Governors
Mike Rodriguez – Senior director, U.S. Tennis Association and U.S. Open Security
William Schaffner, M.D. – Professor, Preventive Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center
College student-athlete liaisons will provide their perspective to the advisory panel. The liaisons include:
Nicholas Clark – Former Coastal Carolina college athlete and Board of Governors Student-Athlete Engagement Committee chair
Caroline Lee – Southeastern Louisiana college athlete; NCAA Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee member and Division I SAAC representative to the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sport
Mary Northcutt – Carson-Newman college athlete; NCAA Division II Student-Athlete Advisory Committee member and Division II SAAC representative to the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sport
Isaiah Swann – University of Texas at Dallas college athlete; NCAA Division III Student-Athlete Advisory Committee member and Division III SAAC representative to the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sport
“We are actively monitoring COVID-19 in the United States and will make recommendations on competition based on the evolving medical protocols established by the CDC, NIH and state and local authorities,” said Hainline. “We are in daily contact with the CDC and are advising leadership on the Association’s response to this outbreak.
“Given the fluid situation, the advisory panel will meet regularly and provide valuable insight and expertise as the Association navigates this complicated public health challenge.”
NCAA leadership has said it will make decisions that are first and foremost reflective of medical best practices and keeps the health and safety of student-athletes, administrators and fans as the number one priority.
The variability the pandemic presents is unique in its own right. The phased reopening one state outlines to its citizens might conflict with that of a bordering state whose re-open timeline may be weeks or months behind. This array of timelines across the country reinforces the localized feel and multiplicity as to how and when decisions about campus and fall sports start dates will be made. Late last week, the NCAA reiterated this multidimensional framework as it noted each member institution’s return will come at a different time and will certainly take a different form.
The NCAA’s COVID-19 Advisory Panel has put together nine core principles to help guide institutions as they answer these challenging questions. The document, “Resocialization in Sport,” takes into consideration federal recommendations, relying on experts, data and science, and puts the health, safety and well-being of student-athletes and the needs of the membership first.
“It is also important to take into consideration that there will not be a quick, single day of re-emergence into society,” Hainline said. “We will re-emerge in a manner that recognizes COVID-19 will be around until there is an effective vaccine, treatment or both. That is why resocialization should be rolled out in a phased way that helps assure sustained low infection spread, as well as aids in the ability to quickly diagnose and isolate new cases.”
The campus-level and national-level decision-making are tethered together. NCAA rules regulate how long fall sports’ preseason practices may run, how many games a team may play, and even how sports like football factor into fulfilling Division I membership requirements. Campus-level reopening decisions and modified preseason practice and regular season game schedules will seemingly need a level of national stictchwork. And it’s possible there are staggered starts and sub-groupings by schools and sports.
As coaches and athletic directors ponder the decision-making with their schedules, there is a lot of contingency planning going on behind the scenes. What if the fall sport seasons need to start later? What about truncated seasons that only include conference opponents? Or opponents only within your region and reasonable driving distance? There is hinting from Division I commissioners that college football teams’ seasons might start on different time tracks.
The health and safety of all campus stakeholders remains the steadfast priority. Campus and national leaders will need to find a path toward meshing the health and well-being considerations of all stakeholders with the economic and operational urgency to return to playing games along with the competitive equity considerations of synchronized playing seasons. The 2020-21 college sports' seasons could be one-of-a-kind in many ways.
Athletics Veritas is presented for information purposes only and should not be considered advice or counsel on NCAA compliance matters. For guidance on NCAA rules and processes, always consult your university’s athletics compliance office, conference office, and/or the NCAA.
