Our hospitals are full, our schools are closed but we’re still playing high school football in Alabama.
We’re testing every single college student in the state for COVID-19 before they return to their campuses, but high school football players everywhere began full-contact practice on Wednesday without any filters to protect players, coaches and their families from this coronavirus pandemic. Sports are more than important. Sports are vital. This isn’t sports, though. This is just turning one of the things we love most of all into a state-sponsored vector for disease.
For a sportswriter who got his start covering high schools in Alabama, and who was a captain of his high school team, it’s all very demoralizing. As the spouse of a front-line health care worker, it’s frightening. As someone who has already had COVID-19 once, I can tell you I don’t want to get it again. We can’t wait a month or two? We can’t just condition and weight train for a little while longer?
We couldn’t even test players before they started slamming into each other?
Players are going to pass the coronavirus around. Communities are at risk. It’s that simple.
“It is very unlikely a team is going to stay COVID free,” said Dr. Zach Binney, an epidemiologist at Oxford College of Emory University. “Even if players don’t get severe symptoms, it will contribute to spreads in the community. You’re going to see instance after instance of high school football teams being incubators for outbreaks. We know this because it is already happening.”
G O O D M A N: Colleges that sold party culture now begging for a miracle
At some point it’s not about science, it’s about common sense and the good of society. If someone is drowning in quicksand, you don’t throw him a 50-pound dumbbell.
“This is just as frustrating for doctors as every college football coach,” said Dr. Binney, who, when we’re not in the middle of a pandemic, channels his love of football into a blog about the NFL. “I have a lot of sympathy for the coaches, but if you don’t test, by the time you see a cluster of kids with symptoms, it is already spread to their families and communities.”
No one is blaming coaches for not testing players. It’s not on them if they didn’t. Coaches are just doing their jobs.
We know there is a pandemic, we know that it is killing people in our communities and making many more sick, but we’re allowing schools to have football practice without any testing. Hey, if there are no tests, then there is no proof.
I called it madness a couple weeks ago, but it’s actually much worse than that if they’re not even going to bother with testing. This is recklessness on a scale that reaches far past gross negligence.
How did this happen? There was no plan, and there were no leaders.
G O O D M A N: Historic changes for SEC football more warning than relief
The AHSAA’s central board punted any responsibility it might have had to protect football teams and the public at large from COVID-19 down the figurative field to individual school districts. I emailed the boards of education for Mobile, Jefferson and Shelby counties on Wednesday about the start of full-contact football in their districts while their superintendents are turning to remote learning or hybrid scheduling. One board member from all three of those counties replied, and he told me to email someone else.
There was no plan, and there were no leaders.
Can’t totally blame the bureaucrats, though. They’re just instruments of the people. Only four counties in the state have canceled fall sports: Greene, Sumter, Barbour and Choctaw. The football team of a prominent private school in Mobile is already under quarantine, according to a letter to parents.
Coincidentally, on the same day Alabama began full contact practice without delay, the NCAA canceled fall championships for Division III and Division II.
G O O D M A N: Exploited college athletes deserve pandemic compensation
“With the health and safety of the division’s student-athletes, coaches, athletics administrators and communities as its priority, the Division III Presidents Council made the decision Wednesday to cancel the championships due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Division III presidents said in a statement.
College football teams in the highest divisions are testing players frequently, and will be required by the NCAA to test players before every game this fall. The SEC has moved its season back by three weeks out of caution, and the SWAC has moved football to the spring. The only reason FBS and FCS conferences haven’t canceled their seasons completely is because of the enormous amounts of money at stake — potentially billions. What’s high school football’s excuse? Is it just that people don’t want their kids missing out? Is it a longing for normalcy? At some point, the risks outweigh the benefits of high school football.
We’re to that point now.
How did we get here? How did we come to arrive at this moment in Alabama when high school football is allowed to continue during a raging pandemic while entire school districts have acknowledged it’s a public health risk for those same students to gather in classrooms?
I asked the AHSAA on Wednesday who’s in charge of testing football players for the coronavirus.
“Each school or school system sets its own requirements based on guidelines of the Alabama Department of Public Health, CDC and the Alabama State Department of Education,” the AHSAA said in an email.
But there was no plan, and there were no leaders.
Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.
More from Joseph Goodman: Football without school shows madness of Alabama