The Tampa Bay Lightning shut down their training facility due to COVID cases. The Blue Jays and the Phillies have shut down their training facility due to COVID cases. Texas had 13 football players test positive.
It feels like both the MLB and NHL are barely out of the gates to try to restart. NCAA Footbal isn't even at the gate.
Anyone else think that sports are really going to return? Or am I just being negative?
some of these colleges are not upset that their players are getting Covid-19 now so that they are immune during the season?
Tricky moral/ethical question---not really.
if we should treat it like chicken pox.
We do not know enough I suppose, but they get it and are sick for a few days (if at all) and then are hopefully immune. I have wondered about a targeted infection to build up immunity.
It is going to be with us and work its way through the populace anyway.
I believe the pathology is via opportunistic secondary infections: A chicken pox infection can lead to pneumonia. It can also lead to bacterial infections that occur in the open sores.
Having no children, I had no idea, I found out a few months ago. Kids don't need to "get" chicken pox anymore, like they used to.
and who knows how long he had the symptoms before then. I don't know that we can treat it like the chicken pox because there seem to be so many varying degrees of sickness.
In fifth grade and the first sign of it was the start of the 2 week Christmas vacation.
It was over on the last day of vacation. My mom felt so sorry for me that she let me take off the first day back to school.
I felt like such a loser....
to ask a kid to play, and potentially catch the virus, so we can watch football?
Is it right for person A to have to pay for person B to not perform the services they receive benefits for? The implicit assumption is players should not play and the world should just absorb the cost of them being on scholarship anyway. If a 18-22 year old fears playing, don’t play - surrender the scholarship and don’t play. Same as a pro player opting out.
that's such a stupid statement. You think that these guys play for us?
How about this--as a parent, do you think it is right to not give a kid a chance to achieve his goal of making it into professional football because you're concerned that he might get a virus?
make the argument you make. Not one. It's all about how much "I need to watch college football." Actually, I asked my question because a father of two boys who played college Football raised the issue to me.
So, the only reason NASCAR is racing is because of the $8.1 billion TV contract.
this is a big business. They're going to do their damndest to play.
And if those kids want to play, they need to stay out of the clubs; that message has been passed on to them by more than a few coaches, I am sure of it.
so you may potentially catch the virus....and he/she can't get drafted
parietals while not wearing a mask.
The only thing I imagine being worse Is enrolling the student at UM.
I am fairly confident in that for a variety of reasons. Stumbles out of the gate in protocol, positive tests, and so forth were to be expected to some degree.
I think college sports are another matter entirely.
Swimming is a low-risk sport and the protocols are something just short of insanity.
It would be a challenge keeping everyone separated on the pool deck.
at the ends of lanes waiting for sets to start.
for teams involving 3 access levels; players, coaches, etc. at tier 1. This is for each team, specifically for training camp, which kind of makes me wonder about games and fans when you start mingling all of the tiers. It sounds like a Rube Goldberg type contraption.
Guessing no baseball until next summer.
It's not like the pro leagues where there's a single governing body that can control rescheduling. Every single team would be responsible for rescheduling its own out of conference schedule, which would need to align with each conference's in conference rescheduling. And it's not like this is for a 32 team league, either. Team travel plans would have to be completely redone. Whatever structure is in place for players' classes that accompany football travel would need to be re-implemented for the spring semester. If there were to be fans allowed in the spring (I'm guessing not), that would present another hurdle. The NCAA would need to address eligibility concerns and how the spring 2021 NFL draft and combine is integrated into the process -- remember that kids sign agents before they start talking to NFL teams.
Typing it all out, it does seem possible, but rescheduling would be the most difficult part. And it would require strong leadership and guidance from the NCAA to help make it happen. Personally, I don't think such an idea ever gets off the ground.
I agree that there are many hurdles. But if it’s the only way to move forward with something that lucrative, a way over the hurdles will be found.
to a positive test, experts say. But that throws the schedule out of whack. You may want to read the linked article, it'll open your eyes to just some of the variables. Testing doesn't ensure that a player is actually "negative". By the time he tests "positive", he's likely infected several others, who, in turn, have infected others, including, potentially, players on other teams. If it goes off, it'll be a shit show and there's almost no way fans will be involved.
Playing is feasible in New Zealand, Germany and South Korea, but this country f***ed this up so badly, it's pie in the sky to contemplate playing games without a chaotic result. What it boils down to is $. And if that involves playing with people's health, we, as fans have to make a choice. I agree with ACross on almost nothing, but on this, I agree with him.
they might have to go the "bubble" route, but the commissioner basically told the MLBPA that with the recent positive tests, there's no way that they can restart until June 29, which basically would end up giving them 66 days for 60 games. Players are said to be voting on the proposal, I believe.
I'm not sure on college football. It seems that they're giving it a shot and of course if they could control the players' outside activities (like Scott Gottlieb alludes to) it would be manageable. That appears to be quite difficult given school, classes, etc.
I'm still of the mindset that nobody really knows, but we're certainly getting some answers coming in with the testing and tracing (or lack thereof). I do think that pro sports are much more likely to actually be able to "quarantine" their players better than college and high school athletes, and I think that we'll see a much better chance of that happening.
Did I read that correctly?
Sounds like shredded hamstring sandwich.
especially if the MLBPA doesn't agree to the latest 60 game proposal.
I would imagine as well that there will be some double headers mixed in, but perhaps not. That's what the union wanted, but health experts have supposedly advised against playing a ton of them.
it sounds like it's going to boil down to "controlling player behavior off the field."
It sounds like college is going to be a bigger challenge than pro sports.
During summer - quite literally do not allow any player to leave campus for any reason. Period. You leave and you are off the team. No exceptions short of hospitalization.
During school - same rules, but they are exposed to the students that are back on campus so that strategy has marginally less control over the outcome.
A scholarship athlete doesn’t have to be allowed to live off campus. It’s a contract. You want it - then accept the terms. The terms are for 2020 season you cannot leave the campus 24x7 for any reason.
Today, as always, my son and I wore masks on the way in and out of the complex.
On the way in, we passed about 100 people, not one of whom was wearing a mask. On the way out, we passed a similar number. Only two were wearing masks.
Maybe it's not a big deal -- we were outside and not in prolonged contact. But damn, it sure seems irresponsible.
And we started practicing a few weeks before that.
I can count on one hand the number of masks I have seen at any point in those 5 weeks. The only think that looks even remotely different is that we don't do a handshake line at the end of the game.
My daughter's soccer team has been back to full team practices for a couple of weeks. Prior to that they had been doing limited sessions with only 4-6 players at a time. Just got word that their tournament next weekend is off, but they are going to be playing some "friendly" type games.
My son attended a hockey training session a couple of weeks ago and is following it up at the end of this week with a mini "camp". This is the only thing I've done in this whole pandemic that felt a bit sketchy. Perhaps that's just because rinks are pretty gross in general.
mound. It's going OK, but it strikes me as a little silly, personally.
Game play starts tomorrow. We have guidelines in place. We keep the kids and their gear spaced out. Kids are not allowed to congregate in the dugout. Parents are asked to stay apart. It's actually been going about as well as it could and the parents are being cool when we "enforce" the rules.
I am on the Board of Directors and we have had to put an immense amount of pressure on the City to allow us to play this Spring (which is now summer). We have jumped through a lot of hoops--which is totally understandable during a pandemic recovery.
People who do not participate in the management of youth sports leagues are largely unaware of the financial peril many leagues are in right now. Many rec leagues and travel leagues are shutting down due to financial difficultly.
We spent rainy day funds on facilities improvements and field upgrades in anticipation of Spring registrations and were on track for our most successful Spring ever in the history of our league. 56 years.
We were lucky we had surplus funds and can/could weather the storm. Many leagues are not as fortunate.
I have been putting pressure on the State to provide COVID relief for youth sports organizations (and other youth oriented non-profits) and have largely gotten the Heisman.
We started game play on Tuesday night. Everyone was very excited to play baseball games. I think the coaches were the most excited to see the kids out there.
Man--I missed baseball. The reward for coaching rec ball is seeing the kids learning, having fun, enduring the ups and downs of games.
Sports is so important to personal development. This was a nice reminder--if we are looking for a bit of sun peeking through the clouds on COVID.
Our Sportvereins are slowly coming back to life. Tennis was first--G12 had her first set of matches yesterday. Lots of hand sanitizer, no handshake at the net, etc. But it seemed to go pretty well.
Soccer--whole teams can practice at the same time, but only in constant groups of 5 players. No one can touch the ball with their hands without a round of disinfection. Ditto headers. It's weird, but it's better than nothing.
Games will hopefully start as normal in September. Fingers crossed.
I was kind of surprised as I figured the fields would be spaced out a little bit with no activity on one or two but every field was busy with games, nobody was in masks, and there was very little distancing going on.
and it's hot (and, here in Kansas City, humid). But it worries me.
That could be played safely. Football and basketball the least likely.
Not that much interaction between baseball teams.
if it meant my sons got to play baseball. Our town rec leagues are still on hold with no specific plan for the fall season. We're still hoping for summer basketball workouts once school starts next month but it's not guaranteed. You don't realize how important sports are to kids' mental health until it's not available.
happy to be playing baseball. They're going to be 6th graders this fall, and the way they ended their elementary school experiences really affected them more than most people realize. I think it really means a lot to them to be able to see their friends again and do something organized outside of the house.
I've tried very hard to keep them 6 feet apart during postgame conversations and at practices, but there's only so much we can do.
no more postgame handshakes--stand on the baselines and tip the cap.
This is in a fairly competitive travel tournament, but I think that it will be similar everywhere we play.
Teams and families are supposed to stay together and not enter the complex until game time with masks worn. Feels like we are some of the only ones abiding by the rules. The boys do think their matching team masks are cool though.
We still won't let them in the dugouts, and keep them spaced out behind, but every other team we've played has talked a good game, but then once the game starts they're all in the dugouts.
We also use our own baseballs, and no one is supposed to touch them besides the defense and their coaches. It MAINLY works, but foul balls are not going to find themselves.
Into the first practice. It felt silly trying to enforce it since just about all of our 12 kids are all playing together and socializing outside of baseball anyways.
But one of the things that we have found is that "X marks the spot" actually works. For everyone. Even our most frustrating 15-16 year olds. If we put cones out on the sidewalk in the morning, each kid will stand by one.
Can you put out some extra benches, put Xs 1.5-2 meters apart, and tell the kids they can only sit on an X?
It is never going to be perfect--all of this is an exercise in cat-herding. Kids can't do social distancing--they don't mean to do it wrong, they just can't get their heads around it. But anything you can do to help will actually help.
players to look at each other and say something instead of the robotic "good game, good game, good game."
We also have no bleachers -- they removed them, and the parents are supposed to sit in their chairs down the baselines. They all end up where the bleachers used to be, though.
I kept the kids with their parents for a game or two, but they were totally out of it -- not paying attention to the game, not ready to bat when it was their turn, etc. I told the parents to do what they want -- if they want to keep their kids with them, great; if they don't mind them in the dugout, fine. I don't want to play police on that.
eye.
Some of the players who are quarantining had been hanging out in an area of nightclubs near LSU’s campus that has been tied to an outbreak infecting more than 100 people.
I think it's harder for those 25 and under to keep apart and far fewer of those have been affected by the virus.
basically, coaches and former players telling college athletes that they need to basically cut down on the socializing if they want to have a chance to play.
Didn't happen. We are seeing pocket outbreaks (including a huge one at a slaughterhouse near Dortmund. F Dortmund anyway), but otherwise are testing at around 1% positive. That's a manageable number in terms of tracing.
So our schools are open, Bundesliga is in full swing (albeit without a crowd), and my kid played a tennis tournament today.
We don't fight about masks and distancing, though. It sucks, but it got the Biergartens open, so all is well.
Maybe in Munich? Concern was that it might’ve been a super-spreader. I haven’t read anything about it, one way or the other. How did it turn out?
BLM rally with 25,000+ two weeks ago seems to have not caused any problems, either.
At this point, transmission seems to be largely an indoor occurrence. I think that the riskiest thing I do right now is go to work, as Maskenpflicht doesn’t apply in the classroom. But we only have seven days left.
that asymptomatic individuals can't spread the virus, then shouldn't they be allowed to continue in activities ? Another question is, how accurate is the testing to begin with?
Obviously, the first point is a big if.
About a month ago.I don't know if there has been any improvement
since then. The feeling amongst some medical men is that if you have
anti-bodies then it won't come back. Others say there is no immunity
and it can come back again and again like the regular flu. Who knows?
But when applied to a disease with low prevalence even going from 99 to 98% sensitivity decreases positive predictive value considerably
For all these tests a negative is for all practical purposes a true negative. But until disease prevalence increases PPV will remain lower
Some feel if you have antibodies and have recovered you are safe.
What is your opinion?
It’s an issue of people not understanding statistics, prevalence, and pre-test probability.
Basically - the prevalence in most communities makes pre-test probability extremely low, so even a test with 99% sensitivity/specificity will end up having a false positive nearly as often as a true positive.
Extreme example of the statistics concept: you have a pregnancy test that is 99.9% accurate. But you are administering it to a man. Pre-test probability of a true positive test is 0, so it doesn’t matter how accurate your test is.
I haven't been able to find anything detailing a problem among the players. The league delayed opening the games to fans because Korea had a spike in cases (up to 79 in a day nationally, a challenging day in Elkhart County) when the league made the call, but there is nothing about the players themselves.
MLB ought to be able to mimic the KBO approach. It's problem is that players and management don't trust each other.
is the lack of a competent national response to COVID in the first place. Korea had its collective shit together, they get to have sports. We can't get people to agree to wear a mask. It makes sense to me that the leagues would have trouble containing it if the general public keeps spreading.
The commissioners can say and do whatever the hell they want, the bottom line is that the populace's actions will dictate how State and local officials will respond. They're the ones who have ultimate say, not the leagues.
Btw, the NBA better be taking a serious look at Ron DeSantis. He's making claims that are unsubstantiated re: the spike in cases, to the highest point yet. Saying that they're the result of increased testing is not the true, full story.
Vaccines won't totally end it. We have them for flu and still lose over 50,000 per year, OF ALL AGES! And flu shots vary in their protection level and have to be taken every season. Covid 19 is also likely to mutate.
The Commissioner has considerably more autonomy, power, finances, "latitude", and more to lose than any Athletic Director. Coven-19 could be treated like the flu rather than the serious virus it is, with only players who test positive being quarantined. If so, the NFL schedule could be played out as a minimal subtraction of players at various points in the season could be managed.
I would place the probability of the NFL season being completed at 80 - 20. College football only comes in at at 55 - 45. Roger didn't skip a beat when his sport was tarnished by the brain degeneration issue. I don't anticipate a simple pandemic slowing him down either.
Already lined up my fantasy pro football site. LOL. If I should be so lucky as to get that first pick, its RB, Saquon Barkley, all the way. Fun to speculate.
Are they practicing together?
because someone on the opposing team was in contact with someone who tested positive.
That team now has to quarantine for two weeks.
There are two other teams in the same league that have this issue rolling into next week.
I don't now how the hell we are going to get through little league, let alone college football.
teams have been playing for weeks in CO, OK, and a few other states. No issues that I know of. Pretty significant rules in place.
One student per seat? The school bus is packed on the way home. How many times around the neighborhood do they have to go? How many hours is this going to take? And it's not like they have unused buses just sitting around to use...
Until you can figure out the bus problem - the kids aren't going back to school (or no more than once or twice a week at most). And that's true nationwide.
Or the radius of no bus service expands. In Arlington Virginia it’s something like if you are within one mile, then you don’t qualify for the bus.
there aren't enough classrooms or teachers for that matter. Our school system has said that classes will have to be capped at 16-18 students. I've worked in education for more that 10 years and have never had a class with only 16 students. It's a logistical nightmare.
As a quick fix, we are splitting classes, but that's just bad pedagogy--the half of the class that has a sub...has a sub.
We are working on creating bigger spaces so that we won't have to split classes when we come back in August. But we have to get through the end of this year first.
As for buses--everyone is masked up the whole time. Seems to work.
That might solve some bus problems - but capacity on the bus here is greater than 100%. You can't do six feet distancing at even 50%.
All of the solutions we have come up with are not perfect, but we are getting there. It's just an exercise in squaring the circle.
The kids have decided they are playing anyway.
What I don’t understand is why tennis and golf are taking so long to get back to normal. I can’t think of better socially distant activities.
I have no idea how you safely play basketball or football. I hope no one dies but I have to imagine someone will sooner or later (don’t worry the dead athlete will have some sort of precondition so it won’t count)
Hasn't started. Golf has staeted, the entire tour is in the US, and one other factor is that most Euro golfers have homes in Florida and were already here.
There was a PGA tournament last weekend. Isn't golf now continuing as normal, but without fans?
I thought they were doing weird charity tournaments and other “events” until restarting the season. The US Open isn’t this weekend right?
They had a player withdraw on Friday at the RBC in Hilton Head after a positive test, but this was the second week back as a fully-fledged tour with full purses, primetime TV, etc.
There is a fairly interesting case on the guy who tested positive (Nick Watney) at Hilton Head: he is a seasoned, mature pro who has been around the block and was supposedly tight about following the protocols the Tour laid out. He tested negative when he showed up at the beginning of the week, played his Thursday round, went to the course on Friday, then got tested because he said he was "symptomatic". He actually wasn't symptomatic at all in how we would normally think of it (fever, cough, metallic taste in the mouth, etc.) - he was "symptomatic" because he, like a lot of high level pro athletes and especially elite pro golfers, uses some sort of sophisticated fitness and sleep tracking band that feeds into software that tracks all sorts of information on sleep, body performance, and all that. He went and got tested because, apparently, the software was telling him that his breathing was irregular overnight from Thursday to Friday.
Concerning pro golf generally, the LPGA has had a more difficult time getting off the ground for several reasons: the LPGA is a more international tour, both in terms of player composition and in venue. The logistics of pulling that off are more substantial than what the PGA faces - most of the international players that play in the PGA live here most of the time anyway, all but a handful of PGA tournaments are in the continental US, and, frankly, the PGA just has a lot more pull because of the money involved and can dictate conditions to host venues on a different level.
They modified the schedule and bumped the US majors to the fall (British open cancelled).
They are playing the RBC at Hilton head right now
It's all going to unravel. So many sports executives and league commissioners used to being in power have no sway over this virus. When one of them cracks, the rest will quickly follow, although the NFL will probably try to hold out until it becomes absurd.
they explained that their are different ways to do it, 1) get a handle on the pandemic and then gradually bring sports back, without fans and 2) let the pandemic run rampant, with no handle on anything and try to create an impossible bubble for athletes when the world around them isn't close to normal. There were 2 examples given, one was the Korean baseball league and the other was the NBA. Can you guess which was which.
The podcast brought up a lot of stuff that I haven't heard mentioned. Even with the NBA having a few hundred athletes, coaches and support staff, doing everything at Disney will help. But, because of all the other people cooking food, cleaning and changing bedding, etc. it amounts to over 1,000 people in a "bubble". Most of these people will not be tested and inevitably it will bring the virus into the "bubble". They only mentioned the NBA and I think that's telling because the NFL wants to include fans, same with college football. You look at that example and you wonder how in the f*** is all that going to be safe in a little over 2 months?
reckless, irresponsible and stupid. If our president was anyone else not named Trump, I would say that such a thing would be unbelievable. It would be beyond belief that a US president would ever do such a thing.
especially in cities with high virus rates
I wonder how many had it already and never even knew? I'm not surprised that there are positive test results coming in, I'd kind of assumed there'd be a good number. I wonder what the percentage is of incoming positive tests across all athletes returning, and how it compares to already existing infection rates? At the very least, it seems like scientists can learn a lot about the infection rates/effects of a very small demographic of people, from the return of college athletes to a closely observed setting.
It’s endemic at this point and no amount of lockdowns are going to get rid of it. Herd immunity or a vaccine are our only hope.
And I don’t think endemic means what you seem to think it means.
But we have a lot people hyperventilating that cases are rising again and we didn’t get rid of it. We’re not going to, it’s here to stay
I guess if reporting is considered hyperventilating, then that’s true. The issue isn’t just that cases are rising, it’s the rates at which they are risings in certain areas, and the fact that positivity rate is also rising.
Some increase when opening is to be expected, but the idea behind limiting contacts, social distancing, and masks is to slow the spread enough that we don’t have exponential growth that overwhelms health care systems.
Opening up doesn’t mean we can stop all of that, and certain states are starting to show increases that look more and more like exponential growth. If it doesn’t change, they could be looking like NY in April within a few weeks.
More about places like reddit where any increase in cases is seen as the end of the world
...it has become less lethal over time?
ensemble with 10 kids, then it's hard to imagine how sports can be safe. They're going to be devastated to lose both sports and music.
cases, you are likely kidding yourself.
Fill in the blank with sports, school, work, church, parties or anything else which has personal interaction.
CoronaVirus - you can’t control it, nor do I think you can hope to contain it.
People (including athletes) are going to have to decide their personal risk/reward decision.
apparent for some time.
Most people don’t understand the concept of a pandemic.
Which is fine, because no one has ever really experienced one.
That's a lot of players
I have no idea what’s going to happen.
Had to withdraw from the RBC tournament in Hilton Head.