Examining The Next Steps For Notre Dame After Halting Another Practice
The phrase made popular since the coronavirus took hold of the United States is an oxymoron at its core.
“Abundance of caution” — the civil and pragmatic phrase so many businesses, schools, governments and other entities have used to announce their closures and changes in the current climate — conveys the seemingly contradictory idea of “excess restraint.” Nonetheless, Notre Dame acted with a hearty supply of caution to stem its COVID-19 outbreak, and the university shared that caution with its football team.
The team announced, using that three-word slogan, it had canceled practice Wednesday and was likely to do so Thursday (it did), and tested its members for the second time in three days. Another round of tests will follow Friday. It’s a prudent move after the university scurried to make a series of changes, namely suspending in-person learning through at least Sept. 2, due to rising infections on campus. The last three days have brought at least 70 new cases.
What makes “abundance of caution” unsettling, though, is the uncertainty it usually portends. Practice is likely to resume again, though the results of Friday’s tests will govern the exact date. It's premature to label a few self-imposed (we think) days off amid the campus’ trouble as the first sign of the downfall of Notre Dame’s season, but it’s impossible to say it 100 percent won’t snowball to such an outcome either.
Football, so far, has done its part in showing restraint and discipline. The team’s most recent test results, released Thursday, revealed 5 positives out of 232 tests.
That’s an encouraging 2.1 percent positivity rate, and the team’s 98.9 rate since June 18 has held steady amid chaos, though it’s worth noting the possible exaggeration of the first number after doubling negative cases in such a short time span. Even if taken as five out of 116 (the entire roster size), the football team owns a much better positivity rate than the general campus population’s frightening 18.7 from Monday through Thursday.
Before university president Fr. John Jenkins announced the changes Tuesday, he revealed his initial reaction to rising cases was to send students home. He chose not to, at the advice of St. Joseph County Deputy Health Officer Mark Fox. But his reversal was more kicking the can down the road than it was digging in and remaining steadfast on executing his plan for the fall semester, which began cracking barely a week in.
The school said football and other sports, meanwhile, are allowed to continue practicing. After a discussion with Notre Dame director of athletics Jack Swarbrick, Yahoo! Sports Pete Thamel reported Notre Dame paused practices to “address team questions related to the school’s decision to move all classes on-line for two weeks. Swarbrick said there were logistical questions to be resolved.”
Jenkins’ Tuesday evening address to students eventually turned into a warning. He will reassess based on the status of the virus on Sept. 2. If conditions have not improved then, Jenkins said he will send students home for the rest of the semester. There lies the potential for an untenable football situation.
This spring, in what now feels like eons ago, Jenkins and Swarbrick squashed the idea of playing sports without students on campus. It’s not clear if they’d do the same when faced with actually shuttering a major revenue generator for the school after it began the path to playing.
Once again, the uncertainty around that potential ruling evokes some qualms. Fellow ACC members North Carolina and North Carolina State sent students back after their own spikes, but said they will continue playing. There is one precedent if Notre Dame is looking for justification for reversing its initial stance.
Notre Dame players have sensed the urgency of the situation, and not just in their apparent adherence to the rules. Several of them shared a message on Instagram imploring the students to do the basic principles they undeniably know but apparently have not practiced often enough.
"Please begin/continue to self quarantine and social distance!” the message said. “Let’s create peer accountability amongst each other. No one wants to go BACK home so let’s take action and make the changes … #WeAreND #SaveNDFootball.”
The second hashtag sends the obvious signal the players can tell the downhill slope to canceling the season is lurking. But if the school can push back against the virus for a few weeks, it might have some scientific help that increases the safety of a sport where players who spend time on these college campuses hit and pile on each other for three hours.
Saliva-based tests with a faster turnaround time and cheaper cost are now a reality. They cost as low as $4 per test, and results can be available within a few hours. Widespread implementation of them would allow teams to test closer to kickoff and increase testing from once or twice a week to nearly every day. They would also help universities as a whole — testing delays and shortages have hurt Notre Dame during the surge.
Once the ACC, SEC, Big 12 and three Group of Five leagues decided to press forward with a season after four of their colleagues folded up shop, the consensus seemed to be they would reach the starting line, if nothing else. The road there has featured some bumps so far, at least for Notre Dame, North Carolina, North Carolina State and ACC members Florida State and Syracuse, who experienced in-house strife with their football teams.
There are still gates to pass through. The toll for some of those may be an “abundance of caution” that delays entry, and arouses the scary possibility of a worse road ahead.
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