The Medic: Here’s the NFL’s first pandemic exam, and how can the Pac-12 study it
One of the biggest blows to the NFL last week was the rescheduling of the undefeated Tennessee Titans and Pittsburgh Steelers game due to 20 coronavirus cases among players and staff personnel as of Sunday. Additionally, the league had to push back the Kansas City Chiefs’ game against the New England Patriots from Sunday to Monday because Patriots quarterback Cam Newton and Chiefs backup quarterback Jordan Ta’amu both tested positive.
Luckily, the NFL was able to pull off a new schedule for the league where the Titans and Steelers can play in Week 7 and have a bye for Week 4. However, there are more concerns now on whether next week’s game against the Buffalo Bills can even occur because it is unclear if all the players and members of the Titans organization can quarantine and recover quickly enough to play against the 4-0 Bills.
Unlike other leagues that are implementing a bubble system to contain the spread of the virus, such as the NBA and now the MLB for the playoffs, the NFL is having teams and their players travel across the country to play, obviously increasing the risk of spreading the virus. So, it was inevitable that someone or a group of players and staff would end up testing positive. However, the quick testing protocols are working because it would have been even more catastrophic if the Titans were not properly tested and went to go play the Steelers, transmitting the virus further.
Overall, it appears that the NFL is faced with something similar that USC students can relate to right now: midterms and exams. The NFL was getting through its lectures and other coursework with little worry initially, but now the league just opened its first exam in COVID 101 and is figuring out how to tackle these problems. Right now, the league’s solution is to work around these obstacles through rescheduling.
But how long can this strategy last before severe actions like shortening the season must be taken?
In the end, if cases keep rising in the league, the NFL can only reschedule a certain number of times before it has to begin decreasing the total number of games played. This could hurt the league’s competitive integrity and cause financial uncertainty due to potential losses in TV viewership and advertising.
I can’t travel through time, so I can’t tell you what will happen going forward. But it is critical for the NFL to proceed with much more caution before it becomes logistically impossible to keep shuffling the regular-season matchups.
On the same note, it will be important to note how the Pac-12 and USC will handle this type of situation when a player or staff member contracts the virus. Currently, the Pac-12 implements a daily testing protocol for student-athletes and athletic departments in partnership with the testing company Quidel. The conference is also adding a surveillance test with Fulgent Genetics which uses RT-PCR, a more effective method for testing. Ensuring that the players and staff are staying safe using repetitive and efficient testing is a crucial move by the conference as it gears up to start the season.
At the moment, USC football is slated to return Nov. 7 against Arizona State, kicking off a seven-game, conference-only schedule that runs until Dec. 19. The Pac-12 was wise to limit the games within the conference since the schools will be contained to the West Coast and won’t risk cross country travel. However, we must remember many schools in the conference are in major metropolitan areas, so it is important to ensure that the players traveling do not affect those dense populations who are already at greater risk of contracting coronavirus.
The main reason the NFL failed is that it did not strictly enforce its coronavirus protocol. The league simply resorts to fines instead of actually reprimanding those who do not comply with its rules. For instance, in games the league lets coaches remove masks at the price of a fine. This punishment isn’t yielding results, as seen with Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden, who was fined once then still didn’t properly wear a mask last Sunday.
Thankfully, after messing up on its first exam, new reports are showing that the NFL is now planning to take more serious actions and measures to limit the spread through a video monitoring system and to significantly hurt non-complying organizations by taking away draft picks or forcing teams to forfeit games.
The Pac-12 has almost a month to learn from the NFL, and unlike the rest of us, who cram for tests at the last minute, the conference should start taking notes now. It needs to add protocols such as video systems to keep an eye on players and staff, include punishments for schools that do not follow guidelines by taking away athletic scholarships for recruitment and impose forfeits in hopes that colleges take this seriously. In the case that the virus spreads among players and staff, the Pac-12’s testing system should be able to recognize who is infected. The conference should postpone games between affected schools until it knows who has been infected, similar to what happened with the Chiefs and Patriots.
Even though the season is a month away, it is extremely important that all schools in the Pac-12 proceed with great caution. Keeping up with this college student analogy, the Pac-12 is that student taking the exam after all the other students have finished, so it needs to learn from the NFL’s mistakes and utilize better strategies before walking into its own test next month.
Pratik Thakur is a sophomore writing about sports and its intersection with health policy during the coronavirus pandemic. His column, “The Medic,” runs every other Tuesday.