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Will there be a 2020 season?

After today’s pronouncement by Dr. Fauci, “Football may not happen this year”, anyone care to bet on it?
My take (as much as it pains me), I’m less optimistic about FB prospects this fall now, than I was several weeks ago (never mind the fact that younger people seem less affected by COVID).
 
After today’s pronouncement by Dr. Fauci, “Football may not happen this year”, anyone care to bet on it?
My take (as much as it pains me), I’m less optimistic about FB prospects this fall now, than I was several weeks ago (never mind the fact that younger people seem less affected by COVID).
I’ll bet there is football in the fall.
 
Well I certainly hope you’re right, I hope the IHSAA and school districts don’t cave in to the inevitable onslaught which will come the first sign of a sniffle from a HS student.
 
Well I certainly hope you’re right, I hope the IHSAA and school districts don’t cave in to the inevitable onslaught which will come the first sign of a sniffle from a HS student.

We already have that now with baseball and softball in Iowa and a few kids testing positive. how they handle it now will have a big effect on fall sports.
 
Seems like the quarantining of the team will carry over no matter what happens, so what if a very good team has to miss 2 district games? Have a feeling the season will happen, but will be very very odd...
 
Last I have read is schools can open up weight rooms for all athletes and start workouts on Wednesday. Has there been any word on this date changing or will this be moving forward?
 
Cedar Rapids schools were set to start weight room programs Monday. That’s now on hold until after a July 13 decision.

Western Dubuque, Dike-New Hartford, Johnston, and Davenport North have all paused their baseball seasons, pending the results of more tests. In Western Dubuque’s case, a player on the sophomore team had close contact with a person outside the program that tested positive. That player had also been in close contact with a varsity player. The school administration didn’t get all the pieces put together until the 3rd inning of a varsity game against CR Washington, which forced the game to be suspended.

I was cautiously optimistic about football (in just 8 weeks!), but considering all the tenuous connections that can cause a program to be put on hold - even because someone only distantly linked to the team tests positive - it’s really not looking good.
 
I’ve also heard a rumor (only the wisps of a rumor, but that rumor came from more than one source) that there’s some consideration of a plan to flip the spring and fall sports seasons. Have track in the fall - fewer people in the stands, much better opportunity to distance competitors - and have football (and volleyball, I guess) in the spring, when there might be a vaccine available.

A wild idea, perhaps, but that’s what brainstorming is for.
 
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have football (and volleyball, I guess) in the spring, when there might be a vaccine available.

A wild idea, perhaps, but that’s what brainstorming is for.

I can't see how that would work with the calendar, unless winter sports get shifted up a couple of weeks as well. And that's where contractual/scheduling issues with Wells Fargo would come into play.

There are 10 weeks between state basketball and the normal state track date. Football season is 13 weeks, not including preseason practice. Something has to give, especially if you want to give kids any time off before baseball competition starts.
 
Sad truth is, statistically kids are at much greater risk traveling to and from games than they are from the Wuhan flu...so let’s dispense with this nonsense and live.

What about those kids’ parents and grandparents? How about their risk from the “Wuhan flu” that the kids could very well bring home without even knowing it (you might also want to at least call the virus by the correct name)?

There’s one school of thought about letting the virus “burn through” the population until we reach herd immunity. But what’s the cost? How many deaths are acceptable? Is it okay to overwhelm hospitals so that they can’t provide care even to seriously ill non-COVID cases? When businesses fail due to sicknesses and deaths among their employees and customers, is THAT okay?
 
I’ve also heard a rumor (only the wisps of a rumor, but that rumor came from more than one source) that there’s some consideration of a plan to flip the spring and fall sports seasons. Have track in the fall - fewer people in the stands, much better opportunity to distance competitors - and have football (and volleyball, I guess) in the spring, when there might be a vaccine available.

A wild idea, perhaps, but that’s what brainstorming is for.

Working in the people’s republic of Illinois, I’ve heard this being floated there as well, not sure if it’s just a rumor or under serious consideration.
 
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What about those kids’ parents and grandparents? How about their risk from the “Wuhan flu” that the kids could very well bring home without even knowing it (you might also want to at least call the virus by the correct name)?

There’s one school of thought about letting the virus “burn through” the population until we reach herd immunity. But what’s the cost? How many deaths are acceptable? Is it okay to overwhelm hospitals so that they can’t provide care even to seriously ill non-COVID cases? When businesses fail due to sicknesses and deaths among their employees and customers, is THAT okay?
Ehh, it originated there so it seems like a pretty accurate description, no sense in getting politically correct about it, there’s enough of that crap going around. Businesses are failing right and left as it is due to closing everything down, trust me I know because I deal with it on a daily basis. The fact remains we’re going to have to deal with this virus for the foreseeable future, we can either adjust to life with it or become mask wearing mole rats every time the media begins freaking out about test results. Death rates are dropping even by MSM calculations (which is a whole other topic) and as for the elderly and immunodeficienct among us, of course they should exercise caution and we should around them but if this country is going to shut down or “pause” every time cases start to escalate, that’s a society I’d rather not participate in.
 
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Michigan's governor wants to flip fall and spring sports. Tennessee has already delayed the start of football. I'm not optimistic about football being played. But, I am usually a pessimist anyway! :(;)
 
What about those kids’ parents and grandparents? How about their risk from the “Wuhan flu” that the kids could very well bring home without even knowing it (you might also want to at least call the virus by the correct name)?

There’s one school of thought about letting the virus “burn through” the population until we reach herd immunity. But what’s the cost? How many deaths are acceptable? Is it okay to overwhelm hospitals so that they can’t provide care even to seriously ill non-COVID cases? When businesses fail due to sicknesses and deaths among their employees and customers, is THAT okay?
How much damage is acceptable from shutting things down to avoid it?
 
just saw on the news that #1 Dowling has baseball season on hold pending testing results, this could be an interesting story to follow to see how they handle if positive
 
How much damage is acceptable from shutting things down to avoid it?

I don't know. I'll bet you don't know either.

What upsets me the most is we damaged the economy and destroyed millions of jobs since March - but we wasted all that time. We should have spent those months ramping up a crash program to increase testing and incorporate a tracing/containment system, so when we came out of quarantine we'd be able to quickly identify outbreaks and fence them off from the main population. If we'd done that, we could have come out of the shutdown approximately when we did, but with a much greater level of public confidence in staying healthy and a much better chance of keeping the spread to a minimum. In other words, we could have gotten almost back to normal.

Other countries did that. Almost every other country did that. They're playing baseball in Taiwan and South Korea, and have been for months, even with some fans in the stands.

But instead we wasted those three or four months by complaining about wearing masks, blaming China for "creating" the virus, and making disease into a huge political issue. The virus doesn't care who you vote for - if you just go about your daily business without tracking who's been infected and containing them so they don't spread it, guess what? It's going to spread. Fast. And everywhere.

I'm glad deaths are down. I guess many of the most susceptible/threatened people succumbed early, which might explain the improved death numbers. Hopefully that continues to stay low, but there's no guarantee. Meanwhile, hospitalization numbers are climbing in Arizona and Texas and Florida ... Not to mention we don't know about the long-term effects on people who don't, you know, die. Even young people "who don't get very sick from this" may end up with long-term lung damage or other problems. We. Don't. Know.

Anyway ... sorry for the rant. I'm just really pissed that we all decided we'd fight over how things looked politically instead of taking a logical, scientific approach to trying to contain this virus - which would have meant we'd have things mostly back open now and the spread mainly under control. Instead we've got things mostly back open now, the spread roaring back to levels even higher than April and May, and the possibility of having to shut things down AGAIN because we were too stupid/lazy/ignorant to do what we needed to do during the shutdown.

We blew up the economy in the spring. That time could have been used to help us all out. Instead it was all for nothing.

I think this encapsulates my feelings about the issue. I apologize for derailing the discussion of football this season (although this does directly connect with that!). This should be my last comment on the subject, and I return you to the regularly scheduled talk about ways to get football on the field in August.
 
I don't know. I'll bet you don't know either.

What upsets me the most is we damaged the economy and destroyed millions of jobs since March - but we wasted all that time. We should have spent those months ramping up a crash program to increase testing and incorporate a tracing/containment system, so when we came out of quarantine we'd be able to quickly identify outbreaks and fence them off from the main population. If we'd done that, we could have come out of the shutdown approximately when we did, but with a much greater level of public confidence in staying healthy and a much better chance of keeping the spread to a minimum. In other words, we could have gotten almost back to normal.

Other countries did that. Almost every other country did that. They're playing baseball in Taiwan and South Korea, and have been for months, even with some fans in the stands.

But instead we wasted those three or four months by complaining about wearing masks, blaming China for "creating" the virus, and making disease into a huge political issue. The virus doesn't care who you vote for - if you just go about your daily business without tracking who's been infected and containing them so they don't spread it, guess what? It's going to spread. Fast. And everywhere.

I'm glad deaths are down. I guess many of the most susceptible/threatened people succumbed early, which might explain the improved death numbers. Hopefully that continues to stay low, but there's no guarantee. Meanwhile, hospitalization numbers are climbing in Arizona and Texas and Florida ... Not to mention we don't know about the long-term effects on people who don't, you know, die. Even young people "who don't get very sick from this" may end up with long-term lung damage or other problems. We. Don't. Know.

Anyway ... sorry for the rant. I'm just really pissed that we all decided we'd fight over how things looked politically instead of taking a logical, scientific approach to trying to contain this virus - which would have meant we'd have things mostly back open now and the spread mainly under control. Instead we've got things mostly back open now, the spread roaring back to levels even higher than April and May, and the possibility of having to shut things down AGAIN because we were too stupid/lazy/ignorant to do what we needed to do during the shutdown.

We blew up the economy in the spring. That time could have been used to help us all out. Instead it was all for nothing.

I think this encapsulates my feelings about the issue. I apologize for derailing the discussion of football this season (although this does directly connect with that!). This should be my last comment on the subject, and I return you to the regularly scheduled talk about ways to get football on the field in August.
Or the fact it has mutated and the current iteration is a lot more contagious, but less severe, also more tests are being done. The first few weeks you pretty much had to be deathly ill to get tested or be famous.
 
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It appears the virus may have mutated to be more contagious. However, “there’s no evidence that it’s any more - or less - deadly.”

https://www.biospace.com/article/mu...strain-in-us-and-europe-much-more-contagious/

Also, the percentage of tests coming up positive is going up in a lot of places. The increased positives are not just because we’re testing more.

in order to use testing to actually suppress the spread, we should be doing over 4 million tests per day. To mitigate the spread, it should be over a million. We’re doing fewer than 600,000.

To stop the spread, you have to find the cases. When the majority of cases are asymptomatic, you have to test a lot of healthy-seeming people. Like I said, we could have used the lockdown to build up a huge crash program, I’m talking DoD/moon landing/Interstate building level, to get that amount of testing. But we didn’t.

(You can see I don’t have a very good grasp of what “my last comment on the subject” actually means, lol)
 
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what are your best guesses as to when decisions about the fall season will be made? Really hoping for the fall/spring flip, just seems like a win-win, just think planning would have to have started by now.
 
My concern about flipping spring/fall sports is that Football would end in May, and then turn around and play again in August. I am not sure that is enough recovery time.
 
Yeah I’m skeptical about a season “flip”, I think if the IHSAA is that concerned they’ll drop it but who knows at this point.
 
If flipping football to spring means the 2021 graduates get another season, as opposed to losing it completely, I think I’d be for it. I frankly don’t think 16 or 17 year olds would really have too much trouble recovering between May and August. I mean, most of them are wrestling or playing basketball almost as soon as football ends anyway.

I doubt it happens (the IHSAA is going to have to pull that trigger really soon, and the logistics may be too tough), but I don’t think recovery time would be the deciding factor. Then again, I’m in my mid-50s and need four days to recover from mowing the yard, so what do I know?
 
What are guesses that the season even happens? Mine would be 80/20 right now that it doesn’t but I feel even that may be wishful thinking. Man this sucks
 
Look, if there’s as many BB teams having issues with kids testing positive (I don’t follow BB, just from what I’ve read in the thread) and having to pause or cancel games, then I can’t imagine a FB season taking place under these same protocols. You have many more kids in much closer proximity, I just don’t see it happening...especially given practice would usually begin in about a month.
 
I don't think it is a kid issue as much as someone within the program has been with someone who has tested positive. I think they will play but there will be some teams affected but not as many as we see the numbers drop by August.
 
Our district is finally going to begin limited workouts beginning next week...thank goodness for the Y. Assuming there will be a season, most kids have A LOT of work to do...in a short amount of time.
 
It's the issue of quarantine that will cause the problems. If they weren't asked to quarantine (like they aren't with flu, strep, pertussis, etc.), then those who get sick could just stay out while ill.

But, if it's going to be 14 days quarantine for you and everyone you were around, well...that just won't work.
Kids will get it, they'll come to school because they feel fine, then when they find out, they'll end up asking entire classrooms and groups of kids to quarantine. Just doesn't seem sustainable that way.
 
Here's an idea for the boys in Boone.

Postpone football for the fall. Instead, open up camp on February 15th. First game of the year will be March 5th. Season will run until April 30th. First Round on May 5th. Quarterfinals on May 10th. Semi-Finals on May 14th. State Finals over Memorial weekend.

Host Track & Field as a Summer Sport. It'll be the spring sport most effected by spring football. Start it on May 3rd. Have it go until mid-July. Gives kids a two week break before fall camp starts up in 2021.

That's our best option at this point.

Todd Tharp, call me.
 
Is there any possibility there could be a deal like baseball? Just cut out the non District games if the numbers aren’t falling, and if by end of September things are stable, we could have a 5 game regular season? It would be better than nothing. I just am hoping they don’t just outright cancel it and at least give there an opportunity for something to happen should the chance arrive.
 
They just need to drop the quarantine requirement. If you get sick, then sit out. Make testing readily available.
But, no need to quarantine people who were only in 'close contact' if not testing positive or having any symptoms.
We need to learn to live with this illness like we do all the others, without locking everyone down whenever a case turns up.
 
And the carnage begins...Big10 only games...maybe. This goes for all fall sports. As bad as missing the Cy-Hawk game is, the pain to the FCS programs who have scheduled “buy” games with FBS opponents will be significant. Given this and the hyperbolic reactions to increasing positive COVID test, the fat lady is up and doing vocal warmup exercises ;)
 
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