SALT LAKE CITY — Just three games into the shortened 2020 Major League Baseball season, there is already a novel coronavirus outbreak.
How it plays out could impact other sports — the NFL and college football included.
What happened in the MLB
ESPN reported Monday morning that a COVID-19 outbreak in the Miami Marlins clubhouse led to a postponement of the team’s home opener Monday night against the Baltimore Orioles. It also led to the postponement of a Monday night game in Philadelphia — where Miami played over the weekend — between the Phillies and the New York Yankees.
“The health of our players and staff has been and will continue to be our primary focus as we navigate through these unchartered waters,” Marlins CEO Derek Jeter said in a team statement. “After a successful Spring 2.0, we have now experienced challenges once we went on the road and left Miami. Postponing tonight’s home opener was the correct decision to ensure we take a collective pause and try to properly grasp the totality of this situation. We have conducted another round of testing for our players and staff, and our team will all remain in Philadelphia pending the results of those tests, which we expect later today. We will provide additional information as soon as it becomes available.”
According to ESPN, four Marlins players tested positive for the coronavirus on Sunday, and additional testing resulted in eight more players and two coaches testing positive.
“That Miami had multiple positives before Sunday’s game and the contest went on as scheduled is concerning. Perhaps any time that happens, it should trigger an automatic postponement,” ESPN’s Bradford Dootlittle wrote. “Another red flag here is that even if you test every day, people do not necessarily exhibit symptoms or trigger positive tests right away. Inevitably, infected players will take the field without anyone, including themselves, knowing that they have contracted the virus.”
The Washington Post outlined the MLB’s 2020 operations manual, the guide for how this season would operate under coronavirus pandemic. It includes how players or coaches who test positive on the road — like the Marlins, in this case — must remain in that city and quarantine for 14 days. They also must test negative twice at least 24 hours apart before returning to the roster.
“This is off-the-charts bad,” Zachary Binney, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at Oxford College of Emory University, told The Washington Post. “MLB should probably shut the Marlins down for two weeks, shut the Phillies down for five days and … hope there isn’t a broader problem.”
Why comparing pro sports to college isn’t so easy
American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco told The Athletic any plan to play sports during the pandemic isn’t risk averse — “It’s about risk reduction — not risk elimination — because we can’t eliminate risk.” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby added that several factors make comparing pro sports to college athletics difficult, among them more participants and teams at the college level, along with the associated challenges of the athletes also being students and not professionals.
“But I think we’ve always realized and been advised that we will have disruptions during the season (if it is played). People are going to be infected, and there will be disruptions. The circumstances in recent days are representative of that,” Bowlsby told The Athletic.
Major League Baseball, the NFL and college football are more alike in that their return to competition won’t involve playing in a controlled “bubble,” like the NBA, Major League Soccer and National Women’s Soccer League are doing, where play is happening at a single location. On Sunday, the NWSL, which held its Challenge Cup competition in Utah, reported there wasn’t a single positive test for coronavirus during the event.
For college football, an indicator of what the sport could face in terms of coronavirus-related interruptions is likely to come from the NFL.
NFL teams are set to report for camp this week, after rookies, quarterbacks and injured players arrived last week. For administrators making decisions at the college football level, they can monitor how situations progress in the NFL as teams return to the practice field in helping to determine how college football moves forward.
“We’ll learn some things from NFL preseason camps. If we see a spike when they get back to helmets and shoulder pads — that will be instructive,” Bowlsby told The Athletic. “I have always thought that it would be good if we could move forward to the point of regular preseason camp to see what the experience is there, because that gives us the best look at what the regular season is going to be looking like.”
Where does college football stand now?
So far, two Power Five conferences — the Big Ten and Pac-12 — have announced their member institutions will play only conference games in the fall, while the Football Bowl Subdivision world waits to hear decisions from other power conferences the SEC, ACC and Big 12.
The numbers are less encouraging for lower divisions of college football. In the Football Championship Subdivision, five conferences — including the Colonial Athletic Association, one of the strongest conferences at that level — out of 13 have canceled fall football. On Monday, the Pioneer Football Conference announced it will play conference-only in the fall.
In Division II, six of 16 conferences have canceled football this fall, and six other leagues have announced they are planning on conference-only play, with three other conferences moving back the start of competition without specifically designating it as conference-only play.
In Division III, 18 of the 28 conferences at that level have postponed or canceled football this fall, with hopes of moving play to the spring, and three other conferences have announced plans for league-only contests. In addition, as of now, five D-III schools have canceled their 2020 fall seasons ahead of a full cancellation from their conference.
Amateur status
On Monday morning as news trickled out about the MLB’s coronavirus outbreak, CBS Sports national college football writer Dennis Dodd questioned if college football should be played, especially considering they aren’t professionals.
“These are amateurs on scholarship to get an education. At least that’s what we’re told,” Dodd tweeted.
College at this point is all about optics. It's not so much about CAN cfb play in light of each piece of negative news coming out of @NFL, @MLB, @NHL, @NBA returns. It's SHOULD cfb play? These are amateurs on scholarship to get an education. At least that's what we're told.
— Dennis Dodd (@dennisdoddcbs) July 27, 2020
The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman shared an interaction he had with a coach and what ramifications a stoppage of play in the MLB could mean for college football.
“Spoke to a college football coach last night who said ppl have to now keep an eye on how things develop because if MLB ‘ends up deciding it can’t play, how do we do it when we our sport has much less social distancing, much bigger rosters, and our guys aren’t professionals?’” Feldman tweeted.
Spoke to a college football coach last night who said ppl have to now keep an eye on how things develop because if MLB “ends up deciding it can’t play, how do we do it when we our sport has much less social distancing, much bigger rosters, and our guys aren’t professionals?” https://t.co/8yQ6nVeV3s
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) July 27, 2020
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