Some students and student athletes might be safer on campus from other things like gang violence, drugs, abusive family members.

I know the article really doesn't mention that, but how many stories have we heard in the past that football or basketball has saved a kid from their own surroundings?

I really hope that kids of all ages can go back to school this fall or sooner. I also hope that colleges have the resources on campus to deal with sick students if needed.

a football re-opening plan and the rest of FBS can either get on board or not. June 8. It’s happening.

Louisiana as of May 11 was only on Phase I of re-opening. Whatever.

I haven’t checked every state in the SEC, but I don’t think it matters.

The Pac-12 Commissioner is just trying to keep up.

At least ND has put out an academic plan. That plan is already behind the SEC schedule — Fr. Jenkins is relying on the order of Gov. Holcomb, which allows re-opening on July 4, but the SEC will have their FB players back on June 8.

And the NCAA is just watching this skewed playing field happen. The SEC is the greatest FB conference in the country, and yet they need all of these competitive advantages.

My prediction is Gov. Holcomb will be persuaded to allow summer sessions to re-open in June. We’ll see.

for voluntary workouts. Basketball (both men & women) also welcome 6/1.
.

He is motivated by factors other than safety and health.

these guys are under major pressure to get things re-started. This (and basketball) are the cash cows that support so many other programs. The LSU baseball coach (former ND coach, Manieri I think his name is) said today that he feels that 100 college baseball programs will be gone if football and basketball don't re-start.

These guys are in scramble mode and are hoping that the doctors working on this come up with some kind of treatment so that they can restart without worrying as much. But they are under tremendous pressure to re-start. Of course there are safer ways to do it, but there is no completely "safe" in this scenario.

human beings around them that would not die of the flu but may die of Covid-19. These include healthy immunocompetent people in their 50's and 60's and mildly obese men in their 30's. During my 11-day ICU stay, there were several deaths around me, many of whom were previously healthy, some far too young. Over 2 months we have 80 deaths and there are currently 11 people on vents, not all elderly with comorbidities. I want football as much as anyone. Covid-19 is far more unpredictable than the "flu". We have to be careful. It is not crazy to think that a handful of college athletes may die from this disease. Recovery is another topic by itself. There are a large number (do not have the number though) of otherwise healthy patients recovering from covid-19 who may never work again or who are 6-9 months away (not 6-9 days) from returning.

1) 18-22 year old people can certainly transmit the disease.

2) 18-22 year olds won't be the only ones on campus

3) Even if you don't die from it, I don't think that it's a walk in the park by any means for many people, regardless of age.

4) There are certainly people over the age of 22 (many of whom that are considered high risk) that will be around the students/athletes.


We owe it to everyone to be as safe as possible. We owe it to everyone to take all necessary precautions, to continue to study the virus, and to also try and return to normal while still maintaining safety.

The commissioner posited that the athletes are safer on campus. They're likely SAFE as opposed to NOT SAFE.

Perhaps a better question would be, "how many 18-22 year old carriers passed the virus on to someone that was at risk, and how many of those people died?"

I don't know the answer to that question, but I would imagine that it isn't a small risk.

Right now, the best bet is to keep moving forward, collect more data, and see where things go. These guys are certainly planning to re-start (the Michigan guy will be put in his place shortly) but instead of just blindly cheering this on and being glad football is coming back, we should try and hold these guys accountable and make sure that all necessary safety protocols are followed and adjustments are made. I'm somewhat confident that something can be done to make this safer, but I don't think just saying things like, "Oh, they aren't at risk anyway" is very productive.

less than the number of people 22+ off campus -- so it is indeed dramatically safer for them to be on campus in effect quarantined from the world than it is for them to be home and then walking the streets with the general population.

Missing from your post is how easy it is for ND to prepare the people on campus that are over 22 to be in contact with these players. It's not like they are mysteriously arriving and no one has any clue its happening.

If you can go to Home Depot safely, you can figure out how to protect workers on a college campus. It isn't rocket science and I am beyond tired of so many people making things far more complex than they really are.

I think that society as a whole is better off putting 18-22 year olds on islands of college campuses, housed with each other, as opposed to housed with people who are statistically far more likely to be at-risk. Not all colleges are set up this way, but even in the urban campuses where students mostly live off campus, society is likely better off with them living there, with other young people, than with their parents.

If there are at-risk faculty, take special precautions. At-risk staff would need to be dealt with differently. Ultimately, the working-age population that can't safely return to work probably need to be put on disability.

He is stating that athletes are safer at school than at home, not that administrators and teachers are safer. It is possible that he is correct given that the athletes generally come from urban, poor communities with higher risks of COVID and non-COVID deaths.

I suspect we will find some more practical approaches to risk mitigation that isn’t all or nothing, and isn’t the same for every demographic. Proper risk management, rather than political risk management.

...The commissioner's point is narrow enough to be useless without considering the wider context.

29% of the US population (55 and older) is the highest risk for the most severe COVID result. They have experienced 93% of the deaths, with the increasingly higher age demographics having increasingly larger percentages (55-64 = 12%, 65-74 = 21%, 75-84 = 27%, 85+ = 33%). If the highest risk of the university population also represent the smallest percentage on campus, then it seems reasonable that one could devise some common sense practices to protect those demographics - social distancing, protective equipment, no in-office visits, etc. It seems pretty easy to keep 10-15 foot separation between students and any administrators or instructors that fall in the at-risk groups or have comorbidities.

Again, all or nothing and one size fits all approaches are not good policy. Students don't need to be held hostage, and it can be done with safety and common sense.

Whether there needs to be intercollegiate games is a separate matter that should be considered separately based upon entirely different risks and mitigation approaches. Extracurricular activities are certainly not critical to the mission of a university, and they aren't critical to successfully earning a degree.

Edit to avoid going too far off-topic: the PAC 12 commissioner was addressing athletes because his the commissioner of PAC 12 athletics. It seems reasonable for him to stay in scope, and his statement is fairly common sense if one looks at the wider context.

The commissioner stated he thought students would be safer at school (presumably than at home). He cited the first rate academic medical centers that are affiliated with PAC-12 schools as the primary reason, if I read correctly.

But that’s almost certainly nonsense. Dormitory living is definitely more dangerous for contracting/spreading SARS-CoV-2 than is life at home with social distancing measures. Access to major academic medical centers is a nice thing to have - something many of their students have from their home residence - but isn’t likely to matter much.

It’s reasonable to note that kids that age do very well on average, and almost everyone with a bad outcome under the age of 25 has had serious preexisting vulnerability. It’s also reasonable to debate the harms of not reopening universities relative to the low health risks for the kids themselves.

But it’s not reasonable to ignore that the students interact with others, and those others then with still others. And spread can be facilitated beyond the walls of a dorm.

It’s also ridiculous to say that kids are actually safer on campus. They’re safer at home, not living in tight quarters with a few hundred others, drinking together and losing inhibition. Maybe those risks are worth taking, particularly if COVID prevalence is quite low in August, but we (conference and school officials) should be direct about it and avoid speaking nonsensically.

Cash

Staff feeds them, cleans up after them, supports them in all sorts of ways.

It is an outlandish thing to say.

16,176 from the same age group died of non-COVID causes.

Anything to do with COVID. Most major football programs are in suburban and rural areas where mortality rates are generally lower (the PAC 12 is the one conference where this might not be true), and the student will certainly be more occupied with school and athletics than if the school were closed. The group is an extremely low risk for COVID, and that risk (being so low) won’t vary much.