Sue Ogrocki/AP Photo
Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, seen here last November, has drawn criticism after he called for players to return to the field despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Over the last several weeks, the loosening of physical-distancing restrictions has prompted major college football athletic programs to announce their plans for the return of competition in the fall. While paying lip service to “athlete safety,” their concern appears clearly subservient to the concern for financial gain from holding such contests in spite of an ongoing pandemic. The supremacy of commercial and hedonic interests over the social welfare has, unfortunately, become indelibly imprinted into the ethical fiber of American culture.
The drumbeat for returning to the field in the fall has been particularly clamorous among Southeastern Conference (SEC) and Big 12 Conference schools, where football reigns as a revered tradition of extracting the value of primarily black labor for the benefit of the few and mostly white. Auburn University President Jay Gogue recently announced: “We’re going to have football this fall. We’re going to have all the activities that we have every fall.” University of West Virginia President Gordon Gee went a step further in proclaiming that “We are going to play football in the fall … even if I have to suit up.” Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy drew condemnation for his stunning remarks on the subject at a May 1 media teleconference:
In my opinion, if we have to bring our players back, test them. They’re all in good shape. They’re all 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22-year-olds. They’re healthy … And people say that’s crazy. No, it’s not crazy because we need to continue and budget and run money through the state of Oklahoma.
As callous and dehumanizing as they are, Gundy’s comments are notable for their blunt honesty in identifying financial gain as the sole motivating factor for rushing a return to a collision sport known for inflicting physical and mental damage on athletes. Gundy could have just as easily been referring to herding cattle.
It should be noted that Gundy’s cross-state rival, University of Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley, has been more reserved regarding the return to play, saying last week that programs should wait as long as possible before playing a season, insisting, “We’ve got to be patient.”
One unfamiliar with the exploitative model of big-money American college sports might naively ask how much additional “hazard pay” colleges will offer these athletes to undertake these risks. As we know, not only are these revenue sport athletes, the majority of whom are black and unpaid, but they have also been stripped of rights over their own names and likenesses. Moreover, the NCAA provides no long-term health care or health benefits to athletes, who suffer from chronic injuries long after their playing days are over. This is a particular concern given the prospects of athletes falling ill with COVID-19 and suffering long-term organ damage that can result from infection, including lung patches called “ground-glass opacities.” Permanent lung damage may place athletes’ careers at risk, not to mention impacting their long-term health.
Such concerns have been erroneously dismissed, as evident in Gundy’s quote, by the claim that, because athletes are young and ostensibly healthy, they are largely immune from the most severe symptoms and effects of COVID-19. This misconception needs to be addressed and eradicated if we mean to have an honest discussion regarding the potential harms to college athletes from premature return to play. College athletes, particularly football players, have multiple comorbidities that, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), place them at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19. Further, prevalent socioeconomic factors place college football athletes at greater risk of COVID-19.
Sickle cell disease (SCD) has killed 11 football athletes from 2000 to 2017. Approximately 80,000 to 100,000 Americans of mostly African ancestry suffer from SCD, though sickle cell trait (SCT), the genetic marker, affects approximately 8 to 10 percent of African Americans, including many pro, college, and high school athletes. As part of a settlement with the family of Dale Lloyd, a Rice University football player who died following a conditioning workout and whose death was linked to SCT, the NCAA instituted screening for all athletes in 2010. The testing remains controversial as questions linger about its propensity to generate false negatives; the American Society of Hematology (ASH) has opposed the testing or disclosure of sickle cell status as a prerequisite for participation in athletics. Needless to say, the presence of this risk factor coupled with potential test shortcomings should prompt careful consideration before football athletes return to play in the absence of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Heart disease and obesity have long been recognized as posing increased mortality and morbidity risk among football athletes. A 1993 National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) study of 6,848 NFL players found a death rate of 46 percent less than the general population, with reduced risk of death by violence, accidents, and cancer. However, offensive and defensive linemen had significantly increased heart disease mortality risk. Those in the highest body mass category, representing 64 percent of linemen, had six times greater risk of heart disease than normal. A 2008 study found that linemen were almost twice as likely as other players to develop metabolic syndrome, which the authors indicated could potentially explain the increased risk for cardiovascular death observed in retired linemen.
The NCAA provides no long-term health care or health benefits to athletes, who suffer from chronic injuries long after their playing days are over.
The increase in the size of football athletes affects college, high school, and lower levels of play. In 2017, the SEC’s Arkansas Razorbacks’ offensive line averaged 328 pounds, three pounds more than the largest offensive line in the NFL, the San Diego Chargers’. Nor is this crisis limited to the highest level of college play. A 2016 study in the Journal of Athletic Training found that the body weights among New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) offensive linemen increased by 37.5 percent from 1956 to 2014 (192 to 264 lbs.) compared with a 12 percent increase (164 to 184 lbs.) among controls. Obesity risks are even greater now in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hypertension, another COVID-19 risk factor, also poses health risks to football athletes, particularly among linemen. In a 2018 study in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA), the authors identified multiple factors present in American-style football (ASF) that carry potential implications for cardiovascular health: “high loads of static hemodynamic stress, relatively low amounts of aerobic conditioning, deliberate body mass gain, psychological stress, and routine NSAID [non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, e.g., ibuprofen] use.” The article, which reviewed multiple other studies, noted that a strong association between football participation and incident hypertension was established in collegiate American football athletes. A 2013 study of 113 members of the Harvard University football team found that football participation was associated with significant increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure and noted that “Practitioners should be aware that ASF participants may be a youthful population at increased risk for developing hypertension … Participation in collegiate ASF is associated with statistically significant and clinically relevant increases in BP.”
It should be abundantly clear that the implication that because college football players are relatively young, they are at lower risk from COVID-19 is incorrect for at least certain subgroups such as linemen. Given that football is a collision sport, players are in close proximity to one another throughout a football game and would surely risk exposure from an infected player. Such apparently inconvenient findings muster nary a mention in the rush to open the gates to fall football. However, university administrators appear keenly aware of the risks involved with bringing students back on campus and have begun lobbying for protection from liability.
While the NCAA has stressed that students must return to campus before athletes can take the field, this position appears motivated less by a legitimate concern over athlete well-being than by a desire to protect its defenses in legal cases and a power struggle within the major conferences in college football. If the NCAA were truly concerned with athlete well-being, it would have long since instituted long-term care for athletes and taken meaningful and effective steps to address the rampant abuse and mistreatment of college athletes. Instead, it has decided to spend millions defending itself against a bevy of concussion, abuse, and antitrust lawsuits. (On Monday, May 18, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Alston v. NCAA found that the NCAA cartel’s restrictions on education-related compensation violated antitrust law.) In addition, the NCAA’s position appears undermined by conference commissioners such as Michael Aresco (American Athletic Conference) and Bob Bowlsby (Big 12), who have signaled an openness to students taking online classes while athletes are forced to return to campus and participate in sports. Such an outcome would expose the NCAA’s already specious antitrust defenses for the sham they are.
The NCAA and its member universities have earned little, if any, trust that they will accurately report COVID-19 cases and take appropriate steps to protect at-risk athletes.
The NCAA and its member universities have earned little, if any, trust that they will accurately report COVID-19 cases and take appropriate steps to protect at-risk athletes. These schools’ poor handling of concussions offers insight into the cavalier attitude schools have toward their athletes. In 2015, over 60 programs, more than half of major college football teams, did not publicly report a single concussion. Catastrophic cases among football athletes, including the recent tragic passing of University of Maryland football athlete Jordan McNair, highlight the substandard care given to athletes and offer a warning sign of what would happen if play resumes prematurely during the pandemic.
Those eager for the return of college football offer the bankrupt argument that athletes want to return and should be “free” to do so. To characterize such a sophomoric position as immature would be undeservedly kind. Colleges and universities still maintain a responsibility to safeguard their students. The California Supreme Court affirmed this responsibility in Regents of the University of California v. Rosen, opining that “Students are comparatively vulnerable and dependent on their colleges for a safe environment. Colleges have a superior ability to provide that safety with respect to activities they sponsor or facilities they control.”
The rush to commence college football in the fall and place a population with prevalent risk factors in the position of contracting severe illness from COVID-19 seems simultaneously myopic and immoral. However, in the end, it may be the threat of legal action that brings the universities clamoring for football’s imminent return to their collective senses. After all, such legal action carries the potential of significant financial punishment. Perhaps the language of currency may be the only way to reach university administrators either incapable or unwilling to understand the moral and ethical responsibilities they have to their students.
