Is The Risk Worth The Reward?

College sports are important. For entities like GoMiddle and Rivals, they are crucial. Without them, it is very hard for us to create and maintain interesting content our subscribers feel they are getting a good value for. Luckily our focus on recruiting has kept us above water on that front.

Without fall sports like football, basketball and women's basketball, most college athletic budgets would collapse. It can't be stated any more bluntly than that - a season without those sports (or some sort of government bailout) would be dire. Athletes who depend on scholarships to fund their educations could be left out; tens-of-thousands of jobs could be lost.

MTSU would be no exception. Per a report by USA Today, the MT athletic budget was $35,834,204 for the 2019 calendar year. $10,577,833 went to coaching and staff salaries, $8,996,688 to scholarship costs, $2,305,671 in facility maintenance and $13,954,012 labeled "other."

MT brought in $1,313,937 in ticket sales (predominantly football and men's basketball), $1,715,277 in private contributions, $5,566,075 in TV rights and other licensing fees, and $23,945,453 in funds from the university.

You'll find no one more eager than me to start the college football season; this was supposed to be my first year covering MT athletics for GoMiddle. I want to be able to watch football and to write about it here. I want all our readers to be able to enjoy their Saturdays the same way they have in years past. I want my co-workers here at GoMiddle and Rivals to be able to keep their jobs.

Without sports, all of these things are up in the air and uncertain.

For all the reasons stated above, it is hard for me to say this, but there should be not be college sports in the fall.

The number one question should be: is this safe for the student athletes? We know the vast majority of college athletes are in great shape. They have to be to perform on the field/court. We also know COVID is far less deadly to the 18-29 age group than it is to those 60 and above or those with pre-existing conditions.

However, death is only one metric by which we should judge risk. Most COVID cases for this group are usually mild with little to no symptoms. But when a case is more severe, it can be a serious battle. Don't take my word for it, here is Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman:

Freeman is a world class athlete. He is at the peak of his profession. Read that quote again - his case was so severe he begged for his life.

Now, you can argue he survived and is currently fine, but can we ask amateur athletes to be put through something similar just so they can continue to play a game?

What is also yet to be fully studied or known is how even a mild case of COVID affects your body and how long the after-affects linger.

For example, per a study by Johns Hopkins, COVID can cause sever damage to a person's lungs, and that damage can be permanent.

"Galiatsatos notes three factors that affect the lung damage risk in COVID-19 infections and how likely the person is to recover and regain lung function:

Disease severity. “The first is the severity of the coronavirus infection itself — whether the person has a mild case, or a severe one,” Galiatsatos says. Milder cases are less likely to cause lasting scars in the lung tissue.

Health conditions. Galiatsatos says, “The second is whether there are existing health problems, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or heart disease that can raise the risk for severe disease.” Older people are also more vulnerable for a severe case of COVID-19. Their lung tissues may be less elastic, and they may have weakened immunity because of advanced age.

Treatment. “Treatment is the third factor,” he says. “A patient’s recovery and long-term lung health is going to depend on what kind of care they get, and how quickly.” Timely support in the hospital for severely ill patients can minimize lung damage."

Per another study by the University of Pennsylvania, COVID can cause lasting damage to the heart.

"Coronavirus can also cause dangerous inflammation in the heart, or myocarditis, which prevents the heart from doing its job effectively. “We don’t yet know why or how, but COVID-19 infection can directly damage the heart and cause arrhythmias and heart failure. So it's an important risk factor to understand and use to monitor hospitalized patients.”

To determine if a patient is experiencing heart failure, doctors measure brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) levels. “When the heart muscle stretches, this protein gets released into the bloodstream,” explains Dr. Glassberg. “If BNP levels are elevated in COVID-19 patients, that means there’s heart injury and heart failure, which translates into potentially higher risks for worse outcomes.”

Dr. Glassberg also reports that about 10 to 20 percent of patients have arrhythmias related to COVID-19 infection."

And last, but certainly not least, experts at the University College London (UCL) said COVID-19 could cause neurological complications including "stroke, nerve damage, and potentially fatal brain inflammation" -- even if the patients didn't show severe respiratory symptoms associated with the disease.

The larger point about all of this is that we still don't know what we don't know - and asking unpaid, amateur athletes to take on added risk while we figure out seems backward to say the least.

The second largest issue, in my mind, is monetary. As stated above, losing college sports would be devastating and the decision to cancel or postpone them should not be taken lightly. However, how far into the deficit must we go before we decide it's too far? Where is the tipping point?

For example, for MT specifically, losing the Duke and UCONN football games puts a large dent in the budget already. We believe the payouts to travel for those two games was somewhere in the region of $2 million. It's also basically a foregone conclusion, if yet to be made official by Governor Bill Lee, that the best case scenario is sporting events in Tennessee being played in front of reduced, if not totally eliminated, spectators in the stands. That would severely diminish the $1,313,937 in ticket revenue MT brought in last year.

There is also an added cost to monitor each player during the pandemic. Increased personal protective is one thing, but COVID tests are not cheap. According to The Advocate, "Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, the NCAA's preferred test, costs on average $100 to $110."

If required to test every player, coach and administrator weekly, the cost could be staggering. 85 players plus 20 coaches (roughly) and another 20 administrators would be $12,500 each week. Over a 10 or 12 game season, the cost is well over $100,000. And that is in a perfect scenario in which there are no positive test results. If a team is hit with multiple positive tests, the tests-per-week would skyrocket.

At what point is the loss of revenue in addition to the added costs too much to bear? At what point does the risk outweigh the reward?

Lastly, my final reservation is to point out the audacity of thinking a plan like currently being presented could work for college athletes. To date, the best thinkers in the college system have said the only way forward is to eliminate games outside of your "region" and limit travel as much as possible.

However, as currently being proven by Major League Baseball, any "non-bubble" plan comes with a host of issues.

If adult, professional athletes, who are being well compensated in order to social distance and isolate themselves, are testing positive, how can amateur athletes be expected to do better? How can we force tighter restrictions on non-paid student-athletes in order to keep the games on schedule? Is it simply to protect collegiate budgets?

Another thing professional sports don't have to deal with is the uncertainty bringing college students back to campus will cause. MTSU's Fall 2019 enrollment was 21,955. And while those on-campus numbers will certainly be diminished this fall due to COVID, and the university has put mitigation plans in place, expecting a campus full of college kids to stay away from each other is like asking to someone to herd 20,000 cats into a bathtub. It's not going to happen.

So while the co-eds are co-mingling and swapping the virus around, we'd then have to ask our student athletes to not participate in said "co-mingling" while also expecting them to be in class every day sitting besides those who don't have such tight restrictions placed upon them.

Without total buy-in from everyone on campus, the plan is asinine at best, willfully ignorant at worst.

As you can see, I've laid out three major issues (among many) that lead me to believe it is illogical to expect college sports to be played this fall.

Here's to hoping we have a vaccine by early 2021 - and that the NCAA is preparing a plan to get every student-athlete access to that vaccine as quickly as possible. It feels silly to hope for competence from the NCAA and Mark Emmert, but if handled correctly, spring college football sounds like a nice thing to look forward to from where I sit.