Rumbles of another vote

Teddy Greenstein:

Just learned re: timing of the B1G vote ... will be this weekend “at the earliest” ... Sun or Mon possible https://t.co/HBZmxYmhF7

— Teddy Greenstein (@TeddyGreenstein) September 9, 2020

We've received some stuff on deep background that tracks with the above. Fall football is not out of the question if the point of contact testing infrastructure is able to ramp up quickly. The conference's response to some political grandstanding seems fairly hopeful:

Statement from #B1G in response to the letter from 10 political leaders from six states asking that the league reverses its decision to postpone the fall football season. pic.twitter.com/ElIvzMlI3m

— Adam Rittenberg (@ESPNRittenberg) September 9, 2020

Speaking of political grandstanding, the attorney general of Ohio:

“I think we have a cause of action” for violating contracts between the Big Ten and Ohio State and for illegal interference in a business relationship, Yost said on Wednesday.

“If these negotiations (over playing football) fall apart, we will be recommending legal action to our client, Ohio State University,” he said, adding that his office believes the Big Ten lacked the legal authority to cancel or delay the football season.

Par for the course in the most Ohio of states.

[After the JUMP: palpable point of contact progress.]

Nebraska has the technology

If this can be implemented conference-wide then football is a go:

… Huskers will conduct rapid-response, point-of-care antigen testing currently used in professional sports and soon to be implemented in the Pac-12, which last week announced a long-term agreement with Quidel.

Through a contract with Vivature, which has partnered with Quidel, Nebraska has already received 1,200 test kits. NU will get Quidel’s Sofia-2 Analyzer machine by the end of this week and expects to incorporate the antigen testing into existing testing protocols by the end of next week.

Having the materials in East Stadium, Lambrecht said, is “a huge advantage” for Nebraska.

Nebraska’s planning to accommodate its opponents, too.

“We’re building our protocol so that it can support two teams on game day,” Lambrecht said.

That might take a couple of weeks or a month but it should be feasible even for Rutgers, if Rutgers copies off whoever it's sitting next to.

RIP Jamain Stephens

California University of Pennsylvania lineman Jamain Stephens died recently. His death was initially reported as a COVID fatality but that was retracted:

"…in an effort to get the news out about his death in a timely manner, we mistakenly attributed his death without official confirmation on cause of death. We had obtained the information about his passing from close friends of Jamain, who reached out to us with the news. We apologize for this error, and this information has since been removed from our Facebook announcement dated 9/8/2020. At this time, we do not have official confirmation on his cause of death.”

FYI if you saw the original report but not the update, as is frequent on the internet.

The myocarditis number

There's a paper out of OSU about myocarditis. The N here is just 26, but for what it's worth:

Four athletes (15%; all male individuals) had CMR findings consistent with myocarditis … Two of these 4 athletes with evidence of myocardial inflammation had mild symptoms (shortness of breath), while the other 2 were asymptomatic. …

8 additional athletes (30.8%) exhibited LGE without T2 elevation suggestive of prior myocardial injury. COVID-19–related myocardial injury in competitive athletes and sports participation remains unclear.

I wonder if the latter number was the source of the mix-up where the Penn State doctor said 30-35% of covid cases resulted in myocarditis.

This study appears to be more about the MRI technique the doctors used and its potential to identify at-risk athletes than incidence rates—because a study about incidence rates with an N of 26 is useless. Also the paper pushes back on another paper that suggested two weeks of rest was sufficient:

A recent expert consensus article recommended 2-week convalescence followed by no diagnostic cardiac testing if asymptomatic and an electrocardiogram and transthoracic echocardiogram in mildly symptomatic athletes with COVID-19 to return to play for competitive sports.⁵ However, emerging knowledge and CMR observations question this recommendation. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging evidence of myocardial inflammation has been associated with poor outcomes, including myocardial dysfunction and mortality.⁶

So: myocarditis incidence is not huge (maybe), can show up in asymptomatic people, and isn't something that can be waved away in a couple weeks.

There will not be a monster tournament

Duke and other ACC schools were pushing a radical departure for the NCAA tournament wherein everyone gets in. The NCAA says nope:

"While all who care about the game are entitled to their opinion, and we'll always listen respectfully, at this time we are not working on any contingency plan that involves expanding the tournament field."

However they've got some doozy contingencies:

He also said the NCAA has explored the idea of using replacement teams to continue the tournament if a team is eliminated because of a positive test for COVID-19.

The prospect of an NCAA champion who lost in the tourney is on the table.

Hockey delayed

College hockey announced that the start of the season would be delayed until at least November. The NCHC has announced a November 20 earliest start date. The reason is the usual. Minnesota head coach Bob Motzko:

"Well, in November [the students] are all going home. All over the country they're going home, and they're going to be home for a couple of months."

It does not appear that financial concerns are going to be a hurdle for a sport in which breaking even is a great situation. The situation in the Big Ten might be one:

"There's some question marks coming from the Big Ten, specifically around football," said WCHA women's Commissioner Jennifer Flowers, whose conference includes Big Ten teams Minnesota, Ohio State and Wisconsin. "As I told our coaches yesterday, to be really honest, the factors that are in play have absolutely nothing to do with hockey. … We're all very hopeful they have a plan to get football back, because that's beneficial for every other sport, including hockey."

John Buccigross has some more details about possibilities:

Expect NCAA to reduce the number of minimum games needed to make NCAA tourney, that will allow leagues to play league only or regional only schedules and still have tournament. The “big” schools are hoping to be tied into basketball. So when basketball starts hockey starts. …

Each league acting independently Possibilities:
Big Ten creating a bubble
Hockey East leaning toward in conference play.
Atlantic Hockey will start league play in January and will start non league competition in November. All are very confident in a season.

Tourney selection would have to change if some conferences are playing only league schedules. The Pairwise is helpless if there is no intersection between schedules—some would say it's kinda helpless even with the current level of nonconference play.