
The NCAA is clearing three college sports to resume activities. The Division One Council said football and men’s and women’s basketball teams can begin working out on campus, starting June 1st.
College sports were shut down in mid-March because of the coronavirus pandemic.
As a result, the future of fall sports, specifically college football, seemed to be in danger. But some schools are to the point where they believe they can’t continue to fear the coronavirus.
“We need to learn to dance with the pandemic rather than being fearful of it,” West Virginia president Gordon Gee said, according to CBS. “We have moved from ‘The Hammer,’ which I call where we just locked everything down, to what I call ‘The Dance.'”
Getting student-athletes back on college campuses is the first step in confirming that there will be a fall sports season. On Tuesday, sources told 247Sports’ Bucknuts that Ohio State was planning to have football players return to campus on June 8.
Getting players back on campus and back to “normal” depends of schools following safety protocols to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
And while the risk of contracting the disease is not fully gone, ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit — whose two sons play football at Clemson — said he feels the schools will have enough information to not put athletes in harm’s way.
“I am one of these guys who trusts, in this case, Dabo Swinney, his staff, his doctors, the advice they’re getting from the experts. I think they’re going to err on the side of caution,” Herbstreit said. “But at the same time, trying to walk that fine line between — they need to move forward, right? They need to start working out, they need to think that they’re going to have, potentially, a season and you can’t sit idle as you do that.
“I have trust and confidence as a parent in the doctors, the trainers, the leaders in the ACC and Clemson, as a parent. Like I said, I don’t look through two different lenses, through college football and my two kids. I look at it all the same.”