ACC Medical Expert Says He Believes 2020 CFB Season Can Be Played Safely

Dr. Cameron Wolfe, the chair of the ACC's medical advisory team, expressed his belief that conferences could stage a 2020 fall college football season but acknowledged the hurdles standing in the way of that plan.

Wolfe provided his thoughts to Sports Business Daily's Michael Smith:

"We believe we can mitigate it down to a level that makes everyone safe. Can we safely have two teams meet on the field? I would say yes. Will it be tough? Yes. Will it be expensive and hard and lots of work? For sure. But I do believe you can sufficiently mitigate the risk of bringing COVID onto the football field or into the training room at a level that's no different than living as a student on campus."

Wolfe, an infectious disease specialist at Duke, added it's effectively impossible to make a football field "a zero-risk environment" in terms of spreading COVID-19. He added that football is inherently a risky sport given how often injuries occur in it and that "we have to accept a little bit of COVID risk to be a part of that."

His comments come after Alabama head coach Nick Saban and Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney both said they thought their players would be safer if they stayed on campus and weren't left to their own devices.

Wolfe didn't make an explicit reference to housing players, but the approach has proven successful in protecting athletes and staffers from the coronavirus. Power Five conferences could adopt a similar strategy or at least implement health and safety protocols that are uniform across all schools, something for which the players themselves are advocating.

However, the broad idea that players are safer on campus than elsewhere seems to gloss over the COVID-19 outbreaks that multiple programs experienced this summer once athletes started reporting for workouts.

The absence of clear protocols also leaves schools and coaches monitoring themselves. The Coloradoan's Miles Blumhardt spoke with multiple players and staff members at Colorado State who said "coaches have told players not to report COVID-19 symptoms, threatened players with reduced playing time if they quarantine and claim CSU is altering contact tracing reports to keep players practicing."

And unlike pro athletes, college athletes aren't being compensated financially at a time when nobody is fully sure as to the long-term health effects of the coronavirus.

ESPN's Paula Lavigne and Mark Schlabach reported that some university and conference administrators were concerned about athletes developing myocarditis, a heart condition that has been linked to COVID-19. At least five athletes from the Big Ten have already come down with myocarditis, which in extreme cases can cause heart damage or cardiac arrest.