Miami football study finds limited practice contact between individual players
David Hale of ESPN on Tuesday afternoon tweeted that the Virginia Tech and Miami football teams did studies of their pre-pandemic practices and found limited contact between individual players.
The fallout from the postponement of the Big 10 and Pac 12 fall football seasons have brought a lot of information from various sources about the support for and against their decisions. David Hale of ESPN tweeted that the Virginia Tech and Miami football teams studied their pre-pandemic practices.
Hale tweeted that both programs found very limited contact between individual athletes during practices. Linemen were obviously the most obvious specific players to come into contact with each other with the likelihood that specific players would be in a six-foot radius of each other for less than two minutes per game.
The tweet from Hale was in response to a tweet from former CBS Sports College Football writer Jon Solomon who is now employed by the Aspen Institute for Sports quoting Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith. Smith stated that the reality of playing football is far different than a regular student walking across campus.
This is interesting. Miami and VT both did studies of their pre-pandemic practices and found VERY limited contact between individual athletes. Aside from some linemen, the likelihood is that 2 specific players would enter a 6-foot radius of each other for < 2 min/game. https://t.co/MbH4Ck95ol
— 💫🅰️♈️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) August 11, 2020
Hale replied to his original tweet that Miami head coach Manny Diaz stated that although the CDC recommendation is less than 15 minutes per day the exposure in a football game can be vastly different. As to be expected, Diaz and the Miami coaching staff likely with input from President Julio Frenk was out in front of this.
Frenk is the former health minister of Mexico. Diaz was the first to study pre-pandemic practices and the amount of contact their players had. Hale spoke in-depth to Diaz and the Hurricanes head coach very responsibly stated that he wanted to make decisions with hard data. The Virginia Tech study verified Miami’s findings.
The caveat from Diaz was that, while CDC guidelines say < 15 mins is preferred limit for day-to-day stuff, exposure in a football game would be at a different level — literal blood, sweat & tears (and other things). So is 2 mins of contact too much? Hard to say.
— 💫🅰️♈️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) August 11, 2020
Smith’s comments came after the Big 10 canceled their fall 2020 football season with the possibility of playing this spring. That would create the liability of playing two seasons in one calendar year. A team that could make a run to the College Football playoff would have the potential to play 30 games in 12 months.
That’s at least 25 percent more than any NFL team can play in any normal regular season. When you add in the factor that the players are not getting paid it creates greater problems than just those who test positive for Covid-19. Diaz and the Miami football program have been ahead of the curve on all of the offseason happenings.
Next. Miami football can play safely according to ACC doctor. dark
The leadership for the Miami football program has been positive role models for the Hurricanes players throughout the offseason on Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matters protests. They have earned the players’ trust and been proactive instead of reactive. With the season evolving a lot more will be presented to Diaz