NCAA Medical Expert Says Underestimating COVID Could Be a Titanic Miscalculation

NCAA panel concerned about playing sports with virus out of control in general population

 Maybe you saw this quote.

``I feel like the Titanic. We have hit the iceberg, and we're trying to make decisions of what time should we have the band play.’’

It came from Dr. Carlos Del Rio, a member of the NCAA's COVID-19 advisory panel. Dr. Del Rio is executive associate dean at Emory University medical school and a public health expert. He spoke the other day with NCAA chief medical officer Dr. Brian Hainline on a webinar hosted by the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

``We need to focus on what's important," Del Rio said. "What's important right now is we need to control this virus. Not having fall sports this year, in controlling this virus, would be to me, the No. 1 priority.’’

This, of course, is the view of someone who’s talking about the best way to bring the COVID-19 crisis under control.

His livelihood does not come from college sports or people sharing a meal or cocktails while they watch sports. Or while they talk about sports.

You don’t have to agree with him. Many people won’t. This is not a great time to be an expert in America. Experts are telling us to eat our vegetables when all we want is dessert.

I love college football. Every once in a while I flash back to simpler times, like last fall, when I would go for an early bicycle ride, put on the TV at 11 a.m. and hardly move until midnight. When I did move, it was to turn my head to the game on my laptop—and the other game on my phone. Or to look up some stats on my tablet. The only deep route was for snacks.

I hate the thought of not having that this fall.

But here’s the thing: We haven’t been eating our pandemic vegetables. If we had been doing that since March, we wouldn’t be having conversations about how many times a week to test an entire football team. We wouldn’t be debating how real the threat of myocarditis is.

``We are playing with fire," Dr. Colleen Kraft, an infectious disease expert at Emory on the NCAA's advisory panel, said of myocarditis. ``Our population has been preventing us from going back to college athletics because we are not controlling this pandemic, because people don’t want to do the basic hygiene things that control transmission.”

We didn’t get it. We went to the beach. We gathered with our friends and family without following the protocols. Some of us said we didn’t believe in masks. Some of us still say that. Or at least still believe it.

By now, Dr. Hainline, the NCAA's chief medical officer, said, he hoped testing and surveillance nationally would have led to the virus being better contained.``That hasn't happened, and it's made it very challenging to make decisions,’’ he said.

Coronavirus remains out of control. It’s not like it has to go away completely for things like college football to return. Because it’s not going to go away completely for a long time. We’re going to live with it, to do things we want to do but be smart about it.

Georgia, where Emory is located, is an example of a state where the virus is spreading at a troubling rate, Del Rio said. The state is at 30 cases per 100,000 people; the goal should be 10 or fewer. ``If we can get there, we can do a lot of things,’’ Del Rio said.

Maybe young men are safer playing college football because they’re in a supervised environment. Maybe colleges athletic officials can navigate the risks of responsibility and legal exposure of playing football in a pandemic.

I hope so.

Here’s another thing I don’t understand: I see comments that the people who oversee major college sports are worried that playing during this COVID-19 crisis will lead to student-athletes organizing, which would be an epic game-changer. I sort of think they’re on that path, anyway.

Maybe you think experts are alarmists. I tend to try and evaluate the expert as well as his expert advice. We have to mesh the best way to deal with this virus crisis as well as practical realities. 

I understand the devastating financial implications of not playing football for everyone involved. I know that’s going to be a relentless and chilling story once we get past the narratives that are critical now: The havoc COVID-19 is wreaking now. And how to get it under control

I want to watch and enjoy college football as much as anyone. I think it’s great that so far, other sports have been able to resume in modified fashion. I think college football is more complicated, though.

Sitting on our couches, it’s easy to say it’s OK to play college football.

If it were you, or a loved one, putting on a helmet and shoulder pads, would the answer be the same?