How Colleges Are Preparing for Student-Athletes to Return to Campus
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00:00 Major college conference commissioners are in daily deliberations about how to save the
00:05 2020 football season, while programs across the country are in the early stages of developing
00:10 reopening plans for their training facilities.
00:12 So joining me now is SI College football writer Ross Dellinger.
00:15 And Ross, the NCAA could lift a nationwide moratorium on on-campus summer activities,
00:20 meaning schools could welcome back their athletes as soon as June 1st.
00:24 As several college programs have already begun preparing for this, how likely is that for
00:29 it to be cleared?
00:30 Yeah, I think most expect the division one, the NCAA division one council on Wednesday
00:37 to lift the moratorium on on-campus athletic activities.
00:42 They do have three options.
00:43 So they could extend the moratorium, which right now ends May 31st, they could extend
00:48 it or they could lift it in two different ways.
00:52 They could loosen the rule very lightly and allow for players to come back in a voluntary
00:58 nature where they won't have coaching and coaching interaction, or they could lift it
01:03 all the way and make it just like a normal summer workout, which would mean coaches will
01:07 be involved in and strength coaches would be heavily involved and be able to interact
01:11 with them.
01:12 So there are kind of three options.
01:14 I think most people believe that the second option, kind of the middle of the two, will
01:19 be allowed and that players can come back to campuses and do voluntary training kind
01:25 of on their own.
01:26 They'll be supervised a little bit, but no coaching interaction.
01:31 Now obviously safety, a priority in evaluating all this, but what are schools doing to make
01:35 their facilities safer?
01:37 Well, a lot of things, you know, first it's PPE, the protective, personal protective equipment
01:45 like gloves and masks.
01:46 Talk to some schools that have ordered and secured over a thousand masks and over four
01:54 or five thousand pairs of gloves.
01:57 And then you've got the whole sanitation of the building.
02:00 You know, you have these massive disinfecting foggers that blast chemicals in weight rooms
02:06 and such and these chemicals bond and they form this protection and virus germ killing
02:13 protection.
02:14 And then of course, you know, the big concern is for not the kids, which their ages 18 to
02:23 24 is the coaches and staff members who are above the age of 40, 50, 60.
02:27 They're going to have to be real careful, you know, wearing masks, wearing gloves, things
02:31 like that.
02:33 Players will be screened as they come into the building.
02:35 It'll be like a human car wash is how some AEDs have described it.
02:40 In the analogy, the player is the vehicle and he moves through the car wash from the
02:44 screening process to other cleaning areas of the building to get disinfected before
02:50 you go into the weight room to train, then you move outside to do conditioning.
02:56 And then finally you exit the building in a separate exit from the entrance and you
03:02 leave.
03:03 So it's, you come in, you basically work out and then you leave.
03:07 There's no kind of hanging around.
03:09 Obviously a lot of precautions in place to make sure that these athletes are safe as
03:13 they pursue a 2020 college football season.
03:16 SI's Ross Dellinger, thanks so much for the insight.
03:19 Sure.
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