Clemson football can learn from Miami Marlins’ COVID struggles
The Miami Marlins set the entire sports world on fire when it was reported that 14 players and coaches had tested positive for COVID-19, just a day after playing a game with the Philadelphia Phillies.
The Marlins have now canceled their game that was scheduled tonight against the Baltimore Orioles and the Phillies have also canceled their game with New York Yankees as a precaution. Some have said the entire MLB season is now ‘in jeopardy’ and that doesn’t bode well for the future of College Football in the fall.
That being said, if we’re going to have any hope for a College Football season to happen- which will be conducted outside of a bubble like the MLB- programs like Clemson football have to learn from the Marlins’ struggles.
No one said that we wouldn’t see positive cases. No one believed that we would come through any of this unscathed, but the belief is that it can be handled.
And Clemson football has to develop protocols to do just that: Handle it.
Clemson has already had a solid portion of its football team test positive and go through quarantine. The good news is that the Tigers recently conducted another testing and that resulted in zero positives. Now, it’s time to develop solid protocols and procedures to help keep that number as close to zero as possible.
For Clemson football to play, and to do so effectively, the Tigers have to put safety precautions in place to limit the spread and to test as much as possible. When there is a positive case, it needs to be dealt with to avoid an outbreak.
The sobering reality that this isn’t just going to go away has come to the forefront today.
If the NFL and College Football want to play, they have to start planning for these disaster scenarios now- really they should’ve been planning for them months ago. They can’t wait and make decisions on the fly like the MLB is doing.
Hopefully, we’ll see Clemson football as one of the leaders in continuing to keep its athletes safe in a CFB world that very well may not be universal in protocol.