Ole Miss is Testing Returning Players, But That Isn't a Uniform Reality

Student-athletes are coming back to campus. Ole Miss is getting on top of potential issues upfront with COVID-19 and antibody testing, but that may not be happening around the nation and even around the SEC.

Student-athletes around the nation are beginning to roll back into their college training facilities for voluntary workouts. 

But there's not exactly a uniform means of how to handle these athletes returning following the initial outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic months ago. 

Ole Miss tested all football players and staffers as they appeared on campus for the first time on Monday. This will continue to happen as student-athlete trickle in during waves over the course of coming weeks. However, Ole Miss' plan isn't uniform nationwide. 

As reported yesterday by Ross Dellenger, some schools plan to only test athletes who are experiencing symptoms. Many other schools are yet to lay out plans to test throughout the remainder of offseason workouts.

This presents an obvious issue, one that many doctors are fearful of more than anything else – the asymptomatic spread of COVID-19. Consider this example of the asymptomatic spread of the virus, one used by medical experts as a potential analogy to college athletes.

On March 22, about a week after the coronavirus slowed the sports world to a crawl, a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean reported its first case of infection. Two weeks later, 150 sailors on the USS Teddy Roosevelt tested positive for the disease and one of those, a hospitalized chief petty officer, died from it. By early May, six weeks after the initial positive test, more than 1,150 sailors—roughly one-quarter of the Roosevelt’s crew—were infected with coronavirus in one of the largest close-quarter spreads in the global outbreak: an epidemic within a pandemic. 

These soldiers were mostly healthy and mostly young, similar to that among our athletes returning to campus, and the virus still spread. 

Ole Miss has laid out a pretty solid plan on how athletes will return to campus. Monday's June 1 returning group consisted of athletes living off campus. On Friday, returning players who live on-campus will arrive. Freshman and other newcomers do not report until June 15. This strategy, in theory, prevents a mass onslaught of new, potential carriers from showing up all at once. 

Many schools around the SEC have similar plans as far as returning in waves and testing. 

Preparations are being made at the Manning Center for our Rebels’ safe return to campus. #HottyToddy pic.twitter.com/sUPGSVYUjN

— Ole Miss Football (@OleMissFB) May 29, 2020

At Ole Miss, players and staffers are going through both COVID-19 and antibody tests. Other precautions in the weight rooms and meeting rooms and around the Manning Center are being taken to ensure social distancing. And at least temporarily, coaches will likely be in masks.

However, even some within the SEC aren't going to test immediately. Missouri and Arkansas, for example, are only tested upon arrival if they are symptomatic. Additionally many smaller schools simply aren't going to have the resources for the costly (and relatively hard to come by) tests. 

It's a bizarre standard on the return to play and return to football, but at least it seems like Ole Miss is doing everything they can as far as testing to ensure the safest possible return for the athletes. 

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