There are two things everyone needs to remember when thinking about COVID-19’s impact on society, which we have to do quite a lot. One, this is not going to last forever. Two, we still have to get comfortable adapting to life shaped by a disease we still have much to learn about.
I think we’re all comfortable with or at least optimistic about the former. The latter’s what has people getting all worked up. We’re all going through what scientists have always known about this stuff: that the path to knowledge is never a straight line that starts at point A and ends cleanly at point B. That’s why information changes so often. Like a wrestler who finds out in the moment that the game plan isn’t going to work, we all have to figure this out on the fly until we see the shots we can take to start turning the match in our favor.
I wrote about the FHSAA’s three possible options for returning to sports in this week’s Observer and if you haven’t read that yet, I recommend checking that out so you get a primer for what I’m going to talk about in this column. Before I get into that, I’d like to point out that literally no one on the board has called for sports to take the year off and that no one in the media who actually covers sports for a living is rooting for the virus. Everyone’s trying to come up with solutions for a completely new problem and those of us with the pen are trying to process it all in real time and get info back to you.
Option 1, which was endorsed 9-0 by the FHSAA’s football advisory committee, basically says “let’s get back out there ASAP.” That means practices come back Aug. 24 and then the regular season two weeks later. Option 2 is pretty similar, but without a set return date or a state series. Option 3 makes tweaks to all three sports seasons to make up for so much lost time (under this proposal, fall sports won’t be back until November).
I understand why people want Option 1. Everybody who likes high school sports misses them right now and would love for the kids to be able to play again. I don’t understand why anyone would bring up gates discussing this. Ticket sales are going to be way down from last year for virtually everyone. It still happens, though. Whatever. The actual issue I have with this option is that it doesn’t give schools much time to analyze post-reopening COVID-19 data from around the state and country, so it’s likely that jumping right in without seeing how schools are handling virus control could lead to a big problem: shutting things down again before we even get to a state series. Whether you think the virus is overblown or believe it’s a major threat, it’s happened before and it could easily happen again if enough of the right people get concerned.
Option 2 is a little better with me if only because it’s got the built-in waiting period of, well, no one knows how long we’ll be out. We know when fall season would end, though. Option 2 does give everyone more time to analyze data and gives the FHSAA more time to make guidelines that the schools want. But having an end date in mind without a start date isn’t a good look, in my opinion. What happens if there’s a big outbreak in the schools and even an early October start looks unrealistic? The FHSAA could look at the end date and say “Well, guess there’s no point in even trying for a fall season.” I don’t see enough of a safeguard for fall sports in the event things do go wrong soon.
So I’m of the opinion that Option 3 is the best way to go here. It would be extremely weird for all sports, but these are extremely weird times and I think everyone involved who truly cares about high school sports would rather get five weeks and a state series with a late start than nothing at all. Setting the sports calendar’s return date for November makes a ton of time for data, sets up an insurance policy in case something happens in September or even October that forces distance learning for a month or two and accounts for the chance that there may be more realistic treatment options available by then. I believe this gives fall athletes the best chance to play a full (if shorter) season with meaningful postseason action. I believe it gives football and volleyball the best possible chance of not having to move to a different season, which is something that has been alluded to in the FHSAA board meetings. And I believe that point specifically helps winter and spring sports teams keep their own multi-sport athletes, because if football and volleyball were to move to a different season after either of the first two options don’t work, other teams in other sports are going to get hurt from losing those players. Maybe Option 3 would get wrecked by COVID, too, but it’s a much better strategy on paper.
We’ll see what happens next week.