All this week, USA TODAY Sports will examine the possibility of a fall without football, and what that would mean in a country where the sport is king.
College football programs have spent the past four months reinventing everything from how players move through the weight room to virtual position meetings to the way food is distributed — all to try and keep them safe from contracting COVID-19.
But there’s another threat schools are increasingly worried about as potentially just as harmful to their players if football season is canceled this fall: Mental health.
Even before the pandemic, athletic departments around the country had become increasingly attuned to the mental well-being of their athletes in recent years, offering more services and resources to players who might be dealing with stress or anxiety in their life on or off the field. The five power conferences even instituted a rule about athletic departments providing a direct link to a mental health professional and being explicit about their role.
But a fall without football would present an entirely new challenge for players to cope with, and one that could very well dictate how campuses approach a period of several months in limbo.
“It’s a very legitimate concern,” said Alisia (Giac-Thao) Tran, an associate professor in the counseling and counseling psychology program at Arizona State University who has researched mental health among college athletes. “They’re just as affected by the uncertainty around coronavirus and college starting or if they’re going to be on campus or online as anybody else, but you’ve also got for many college athletes the threat of losing that important piece of identity and social contact, structure and the formalities and logistics behind that. It’s very stressful.”
During the past four months of uncertainty around college football, coaches have generally made it a priority to maintain some type of structure — even from a distance — and encourage players to prepare for the season as if it would start at the normal time.
But players aren’t oblivious to what’s going on around them. They have known there’s a real possibility that, at minimum, the start of the season could be delayed for several weeks and perhaps into the spring. The idea that football season might have to be canceled entirely has not escaped anyone who follows the news.
North Carolina coach Mack Brown said his strategy has been to “over-communicate” with players and parents about what is going on with the message to focus on doing their job as if the season would start on time but to be mentally prepared for anything.
“There’s so much fluid activity with the virus and our lives that are unanswered,” he said. “The only thing that is assured is we’re not assured of anything and that’s what we have to do is manage day to day and let people who are in charge of whatever they’re in charge of getting us answers.”
For now, that message can hold up to keep players engaged with their physical and mental preparation for the season. But if that gets taken away and players have to live several more months in limbo? It’s going to be up to schools and health professionals to be vigilant about identifying and dealing with potential anxiety and depression.
"I know my colleagues across the Pac 12 were all really, really thoughtful about that and deliberate and intentional about how we meet that demand because it will be different than what we’ve faced at any other point,” said Alex Auerbach, who recently left his position as director of clinical and sports psychology at University of Arizona to become director of wellness and development for the Toronto Raptors. “It’s really bringing mental health to the forefront in maybe a way it hasn’t been in the past and collectively as a group we’re ready to rise to that occasion.”
For some players who were expecting to enter the NFL draft next year, losing a college football season this fall could be a particular concern. Studies have shown that the pressure on those players to perform well and transform their family’s financial future can impact their mental health, but months and months of added uncertainty about their pro prospects could have a significant negative effect.
“For many athletes I’m finding things like anxiety and depression run very high and with large scale national data I’m seeing rates of anxiety as high as 50% for some groups,” Tran said. “Anecdotally, I can tell you a lot of athletes say, ‘When I got injured was when I got in my head and it really got to me,’ because suddenly they had all this time to think about it. So for these elite athletes who are thinking about going pro, they’re not actively working toward the goal and the plans they had made. For some of them that’s going to be very stressful and that’s a natural part of anyone whose goals are disrupted. For individuals who are high performing and competitive, if they’re eyeing that possibility, it can be very impactful.”
The mental health component is a major reason why Oklahoma athletics director Joe Castiglione said he envisions players being allowed to continue some type of training on campus even in the event that football season does not take place this fall.
Oklahoma was one of the last major programs to start voluntary workouts on campus, waiting until July 1 while many other schools opened their facilities in early June. But Castiglione said it’s clear players missed the structure of the program and having the camaraderie of a team dynamic and he would not want to take that opportunity away from them, even if they weren’t preparing for games.
“We just went 3-4 months without them being on campus and I can’t and maybe I don’t want to fathom having to tell them to leave campus again,” Castiglione said. “We’re still going to be providing all of the aid and services for them, and there could be a modified schedule regiment if competition isn’t going. But I really believe in addition to the physical health and welfare of the conditioning and the modified practices, the mental health component that is just as important and if not more so and that I think relates to the point of being around each other to the extent they can.”
In the meantime, Tran suggests that schools who survey their athletes’ mental health once a year or perhaps more often start doing it now and on an ongoing basis so that they have the data and can be vigilant about getting players the help they might need. There’s also an added concern in the COVID-19 environment due to the fact that many players who either contracted the virus or were in contact with someone who had it had to be put in isolation for two weeks, which can be a challenge to anyone’s mental health.
It would also help if schools went ahead and made a decision about the season rather than leaving weeks and weeks of uncertainty and pushing the start of the season back in increments. In other words, if ultimately the football season didn't happen this fall, it would likely be better from a mental health standpoint for players to have some certainty rather than continually having hope pulled away from them.
“I think all of us are looking for some control in this situation and it’s a situation we don’t have any control over,” Auerbach said. “The research would say people would be better off knowing so they can plan for it and adjust and adapt rather than dragging it out and drawing on people’s heartstrings and stress and anxiety. So it’s a situation of acute stress finding out right way and dealing with the stress of probably very high magnitude versus having this chronic stress and not being sure what it means. Most people would be better with it being an acute issue than adjusting and pivoting and a lot of college athletics staffs would pivot around it too if they knew right away.
“I give them credit. I do think a lot of them are trying to be optimistic, trying to go forward and we’re all trying to do the best we can. But it is a hard thing on the human body to be so stressed. It’s affecting a lot of people’s mental health and athletes are included in that.”
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July 25, 2020 at 06:02PM
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Opinion: College football programs fighting another opponent in pandemic: mental health - USA TODAY
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