There are high school football coaches in the state of Alabama who are scared to speak out, says Mark Rose of Russell County.
He can no longer remain silent.
Rose has been coaching for 30 years, and before that he played for Pat Dye at Auburn. He loves the game more than anyone, but love of football or anything else shouldn’t make this a hard call. Not after what he has seen. Shut it down, says Rose. Before people die, or any more people die, high school football needs to be shut down.
“There are no testing policies. Zero,” Rose said. “Of course players want to play. Players want to do a lot of things. It’s the adults that are supposed to be protecting them. It’s our jobs.”
The AHSAA, the state of Alabama and local school districts have failed in that fundamental responsibility when people needed their leadership most of all. High school football without testing is putting families and communities at great risk and, as Rose put it in an editorial for the Auburn-Opelika News, it is “unconscionable.”
No arguments here, and his bravery for taking a stand should be saluted.
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Schools are testing players and personnel weekly in the SEC and other conferences. The Pac-12 and Big Ten postponed their seasons until spring due to the risk of myocarditis, or inflamed heart muscles, caused by a coronavirus infection. The NCAA suspended championships in college football’s other divisions.
Meanwhile, many high schools in Alabama, including Rose’s Russell County, are allowing football but not in-class learning to begin the fall term.
“Sending out players to the field with zero testing policies then sending them home to vulnerable parents and grandparents is unconscionable,” Rose wrote.
He’s absolutely right. There is no way around that fact, and it cannot be rationalized away or debated with dubious statistics. It is not a matter of opinion, as AHSAA director Steve Savarese has said in the past.
“It’s brutal. It’s terrible. It’s reckless,” Rose said. “This has been the worst month of my career.”
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Rose says he knows coaches “who have had their supplements threatened” for pushing back against playing football during a deadly pandemic without testing.
“How many coaches are hiding this stuff and telling their players not to get tested?” Rose said.
That it’s even a question is horrifying, and an example of how poor leadership at the state level has made coaching high school football a nightmare and contributed to a public health crisis.
Rose spoke to AL.com on Tuesday and shed more light on the struggles of coaching high school football during the coronavirus pandemic. He had a coronavirus cluster on his team before contact practices were even allowed.
“We were wearing masks and following the rules,” Rose said.
Due to that outbreak, a young coach and close friend of Rose’s recently came off the ventilator and is lucky to be alive. Parents are getting sick. It’s on Rose and no one else to tell players who live with grandparents they probably shouldn’t be participating.
“That’s not my idea of a team,” Rose said.
It’s exclusion borne from the AHSAA’s gross negligence.
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Rural Black communities have been disproportionately affected during the coronavirus pandemic, and Rose should be commended for recognizing that, says one of his former players.
“The majority of his players are African-American and he realizes that, and that’s a big deal in my community,” said Ali Sharrieff, who played at Alabama from 2006-2009. “He understands the dynamic, and he understands where he’s at.”
Rose’s Russell County football team has been quarantined or shut down twice, but his team is scheduled to play Pike Road on Sept. 4. Russell County’s situation isn’t unique. Teams all over the state have been quarantined and missed practice time and games due to coronavirus clusters. At least 15 games were canceled, postponed or forfeited during the first week of the season. Should there be a second?
It’s not a hard question without testing for teams.
“We’re sending 100 on my side and 100 on the other side onto a field and running them into each other without testing,” Rose said. “It’s ridiculous.”
It’s Alabama high school football, but right now it’s not a reflection of what we value most of all as a state. It’s an indictment on what we’re willing to ignore.
Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.
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