Hinton’s Parent Group Letter and Questions for NCAA
I think it’s been mentioned on the board before that Chris Hinton’s parents are leading a group of parents with Covid concerns and they have recently sent a letter to the NCAA that contains 22 questions that they would like answers for regarding how to safely return to playing football. I don’t think they have any ridiculous questions but it does provide some insight into how much detail a plan to play is going to have to have to make some players parents comfortable.
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Will our conference come up with uniform requirements for all schools to adhere to regarding COVID?
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What COVID reporting will be published, and how often? Will parents know the number of positives on their team?
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What does COVID testing regimen look like? What specific test is being used and how often will players be tested?
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If weekly, then will it be on the same day each week? What day?
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How are you going to quarantine players and students living on and off campus who return to campus testing positive for COVID?
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If a player has antibodies, will they be tested on the same schedules as the rest of the team?
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Do you plan to test all football personnel including coaches, administrators, nutrition staff and all others that will be in contact with the players weekly as well?
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What additional education and training is required for the football staff?
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What is your plan for contact tracing, especially with respect to athletes living off campus?
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Is there a sanitation protocol and cleaning schedule for campus and off-campus housing?
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What are the ICU capacities at the local hospital?
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If local hospitals are at capacity, where does an athlete go for in-patient car, if needed?
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When a player tests positive, what’s the protocol for them to return to “football" after recovering?
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Will an athlete testing positive receive cardiovascular/lung testing before they return to workouts?
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What academic accommodations will be made to student athletes who test positive?
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MASKS: will players/coaches/referees/staff wear them during practice?
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What is being done to create PPE to limit the potential spread during the games? (changing the format of the huddle, masks that don't restrict air flow, shields that extend lower on the helmet?)
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What compliance and reporting surveillance mechanisms will be in place, and what body will be authorized for this oversight and enforcement?
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Who is in charge of oversight when positive cases begin to increase? Who makes the decision of when to stop practices?
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Will all medical expenses related to COVID be covered?
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Will our University implement insurance coverage both short and long term?
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Will players be given the option to abstain from the season while retaining their scholarship benefit and eligibility?
Every news article portrays this as questions to "The NCAA," but actually these are all questions (except the second part of question #22) that need to be addressed to the individual school that the player is attending.
But they are very good questions, and Michigan--and all of the other schools--should be addressing them with the players and their families.
Yeah, if you can't answer these questions as an organization what have you even been doing for the last 4 months?
See, that's exactly why the Hinton's started this group. They are concerned their two sons will receive different PPE, care, and protocols since they attend two schools separated by nearly the entire country. They want a standardized system for testing and prevention.
I certainly do get that they would want that. I think people are imagining that the NCAA has much more power than it actually does. Note that this is more a question of inaccurate reporting in the media--the questions are not addressed to "The NCAA" as a group, but instead to the Athletic Directors as individuals.
You know, I think in addition to part b of question #22, the NCAA also has power to address question #17, because it is a question of changing in-game rules. They can and should pass rules allowing full shields on the helmets, for example, which I think are not permitted now.
They're addressing this to the NCAA because it shouldn't be up to individual schools. The NCAA should have been a large presence during the period of trying to get back to football (and all sports) in order to create standardized policies and practices regarding COVID-19 that would be common across the board. Instead they've taken the coward's route (which isn't all that unusual for them, I suppose) which has by default left creating policy for a global pandemic up to individual schools. This should never, ever be the case.
This^^^
Yes, all of these questions should absolutely be addressed to each individual school. But this group is specifically addressing the NCAA, as the 'governing organization of college athletics', in an attempt to create a level playing field across the sport. Anything short of standardization from the very top (ie: the NCAA), will result in an uneven playing field - especially if/when teams from different conferences play each other (assuming, of course, that each conference implements a standard protocol).
For all the naysayers that will inevitably tell us that the NCAA can't implement such rules across various state boundaries, bullshit. Lay out the protocol and tell schools to comply. If they don't, for whatever reason, they don't get to participate in any NCAA sanctioned bowl game, tournament, or conference championship.
You know, the more I read this letter that was sent the more I realize this is mis-reporting by the media and not a misunderstanding by those who addressed the letter. Look at #1:
"Will our conference come up with uniform requirements for all schools to adhere to regarding COVID?" (emphasis added).
The parents know where the power lies here, and are asking about it directly. The NCAA? Nay, they say. It lies with the ADs, the Presidents, and the Conferences.
I understand your point, but I read that differently. The group consists of parents from every school, and across all conferences. I believe the only way to answer the "our conference" question is for the NCAA to provide a standard protocol, and then 'enforce' (for lack of better term) its implementation using the carrot of inclusion in sanctioned championship events. You don't play by our rules, you don't play in our games...
That's an excellent point. We know NCAA has it's limitations when it comes to individual schools, but as the governing body they need to create standard policies and protocols. Schools left to themselves to create these shouldn't happen on something so important. You hit it on the nose.
Literally the first question asks if there's a uniform standard or are individual schools making decisions. When you travel to other teams facilities several times a season, you really need to have a baseline set of guidelines everyone agrees to so people know what they're getting into.
Yep. You probably posted this right around the same time I posted a response quoting that section, but I realized that the letter, addressed to the ADs, was asking for uniform conference rules, not uniform NCAA rules. That's perfectly reasonable, and the whole thing is a misunderstanding by the media who are reporting that they are asking for NCAA regulation--they are not. They are asking for conferences to regulate this.
What happens when a player gets COVID from football (game or practice) and has long term effects (e.g. slightly reduced lung capacity, trouble breathing...)? Who gets sued?
If there are enough Universities and K-12 schools saying it's too dangerous to attend class, let along play football, how can Michigan disagree?
I suspect that nobody will get sued because the next covid bill will include liability protections for schools and businesses. That will be the core tradeoff – a much larger amount of money to schools and local governments in return for liability protections.
Schools need about $150B to reopen in accordance with guidelines. To date, they've been allocated $13B.
You're more likely to see mass teacher strikes in the fall than any formalized trade-off.
I haven’t heard this information. Could you provide more details? I’d like to learn more. Thank you in advance!
There are a lot of articles about it, here's one (feel free to pick your own news source), but the CARES act allocated about 13B and the estimates on need to reopen vary from mid 100B to 200B+, but in any case, at least an order of magnitude more than the currently allocated funds.
As far as what they're spending that money on, it's a lot of things:
The recommendations will be expensive to implement: For an average school district with 3,659 students in 8 school buildings, hand sanitizer alone will be $39,517. Additional custodial staff to sanitize schools could be another $448,000. And if schools add bus aides to screen students for fevers before they board, that would be an additional $384,000.
I don’t think that the argument over schools opening is as much about the health of the students as it is about community spread and older staff. (But clearly the focus of this letter seems to be on safety of the players).
Looks like a very reasonable and well thought out list, that I would hope coaches are using a reference point when setting their policies.
Not sure I love a uniformity approach from the NCAA because when that level of bureaucratization gets involved so much dross gets layered on top of the good stuff you lose sight of what the regulations are even supposed to do.
There needs to be a basic, fundamental standard set by the NCAA and conferences. Individual universities would be welcome to go above and beyond that baseline-or decline participating if so decided.
Love everything about this ,the content, the approach, the good will.
The issue is that I don't think any cosch\school in this country could even begin to answer all of these (reasonable) questions, and that is a scary thought this close to any potential season.
Good for them, but this is way too much transparency & uniformity for the NCAA, plus how are they going to police it? There's no way in hell if there's a problem schools will be this transparent about it and open themselves up to unnecessary liability. Do you picture Justin Fields, Trevor Lawrence, etc testing positive while asymptomatic and sitting out before a big game? And, what can the NCAA do to enforce it?
I suspect they wouldn't sit, at which point it becomes 'cheating'. I have no doubts that the NCAA would treat these cheats then every bit as harshly as they deal with cheats today.
I'm sure UNC, LSU, Arizona, Kansas, et all, have already signed up to play...
I suspect they wouldn't sit, at which point it becomes 'cheating'. I have no doubts that the NCAA would treat these cheats then every bit as harshly as they deal with cheats today.
Which then puts UM at a disadvantage if they abide by these rules.
Great, so Chris Hinton won't be suiting up this year. Not gonna help the DL depth chart.
This is your take?
Ummmm....maybe? Not if you're gonna beat me up though.
It is my "semi in jest" take, but if your mom and dad are this concerned about the virus that they have to ask this amount of questions, it would seem unlikely they are going to let you play football this fall.
Except that they've already praised Michigan's (and Harbaugh's) response and attitude, and the protocol's that are set up.
If local hospitals are at capacity, where does an athlete go for in-patient car, if needed?
Sounds like an OSU specific question -- amirite?
I was thinking Purdue... Perhaps the Boilers have set aside a couple of extra white vans to drive patients to another hospital?
The questions are fine .... but in many ways they are unanswerable.
And think about this. If every American necessitated rock-solid answers to these questions before going back to work or play, we'd likely never see anyone go back.
Ultimately, it will come down to the players and parents answering this question: "there is a non-zero risk involved in coming back, we will try to reduce that risk but we can't truly make it non-zero. So, are you willing to accept that risk or not?"
Fair or not, that's the situation.
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On a side note, teachers are going to be in the same position very soon. They may threaten to strike for the lack of answers. It will be interesting to see just how much public support they get if/when that happens.
Spot on
That response seems like a cop out. Parents and players already know there is a non-zero risk involved in coming back --- this parents group is essentially asking two major questions:
1) Do you (i.e., NCAA, Conference University) have a plan?
2) And how consistent is that plan from institution to institution?
Maybe some of the questions are unanswerable at this point, but if any institution came back and shrugged their shoulders and said something equivalent to your response above, as a parent, there is know way I would feel comfortable sending my child back to participate.
Thanks for your response - and I acknowledge, in some ways, the response (not your response, but the one you were referring to) IS a cop-out.
As an anecdote, take my company's "back-to-the office committee." There's a plan, one has been devised. But it's not a fool-proof plan. And when the plan gets released, it inevitably gets questioned, and a number of colleagues say "it's not fool-proof, we need something better."
So the committee goes back and comes up with something else. Which meets the same response.
Rinse and repeat.
U-M (or any FBS school) hasn't been negligent over the course of the past few months. They ARE earnestly trying to come up with something. But at some point, their response will become, in so many words "we can't get to perfection: take it or leave it."
That'll separate the real teachers from those just collecting a paycheck.
My wife is a teacher and she can't wait to get back in a classroom. She totally understands there is no reasonable way to social distance with 25 kids in a classroom, no way these kids are going to mask, and her plan is just to wear a mask and hope for the best.
You can take reasonable precautions to slow the spread, and minimize your chance of getting it right now, but honestly, pretty much everyone (60%? 90%?) is going to get it. It's part of life now, so better get on with it.
Or it will separate the teachers with serious health risks from those without.
So what is your answer to a teacher with a serious health risk? Which, thanks to our government agencies trying to scare us to death rather than inform us, we have almost no idea what those serious health risks are, other than obesity and diabetes (which is media code for obesity in blacks).
Put the teacher on leave until Covid is gone? I have news for you people. You can start calling it "seasonal flu and covid" now, because even when we hit the magic number where C19 stops hospitalizing us in the 10s of 1000s every time we try to get back to normal, that's what's going happen.
"... diabetes (which is media code for obesity in blacks) ..."
Elegant.
I didn't come up with it. I don't have the inherent racial biases our media friends do. It took awhile to add all these media comments up:
Diabetes is endemic in the inner city (despite what the media thinks, not all blacks live in the inner city, and not all residents of the inner city are black)
Diabetes is prevalent among the poor (again, despite what the media think, there are a lot of non-black poor, and not even a majority of blacks are poor)
Diabetics tend to come from underrepresented areas (underrepresented has long meant black in the media)
Diabetics tend to have less access to health care (correlates to poor and inner city, but also tends to mean black, although working in health care I'd maintain rural communities more tend to lack adequate access to health care than cities)
I'm sure there are more things that clued me in that it was a liberal dog whistle meaning black, but I've shown my math.
In reality, Type 1 diabetics are generally fragile, so I would assume they would be high risk. Adult diabetics are highly associated with obesity, so it's sort of redundant to say obesity and diabetes unless it was a code word right?
My wife is the same way. All she wants is to teach kids. She understands the risks. She just wants back into her classroom.
I'm the same way (high school teacher). I'll be wearing a flimsy face shield as little as possible and if I get it, I like my odds to be asymptomatic or get better.
I strongly disagree that these questions are unanswerable. They're direct and specific. If schools and the NCAA can't answer them then there is no reason to have college athletics at this point in time.
Of course players and parents know there is a non-zero risk in coming back. There wouldn't be a group organizing letters like this otherwise. The whole point is to understand the risk mitigation procedures being put in place to protect everyone involved.
Catch 22 ... seems like an ominous "shot over the bow" for college football
Dear college football:
Peace out. See you when we see you.
Sincerely, People who used to care.
I remember seeing that players will have shields. Is this just on the sideline?
If yes to on the field then this poses two issues: 1) current rules don’t allow it and 2) it will be hard to communicate
Lots of players already wear full face shields (aka: visors) on the field. Please point to the rule that disallows such a thing.
Want to have some fun? Imagine the innocuous, content-free, boilerplate bullshit response these people will get from some NCAA turd-polisher.
Question 19 is key — who has oversight, and do they have the power to pull the plug?
Haven’t had a chance to read through this fully yet, but I just have to say I am so proud to have the Hinton’s as a part of our Michigan family. Their tenacity in chasing this and aggressively seeking safety and answers for not only their blood, but the children/young men (and women) of all other parents is nothing short of amazing
I know most of you are probably getting sick of reading the same comment that I've been posting the last few weeks, but I'll say it again:
We are now LESS THAN 4 WEEKS away from fall camp and full on contract drills starting, and we still have no idea what the state of college football will look like this season let alone who our week 1 opponent will be. (zero percent chance the team is flying to Washington)
Who in their right mind still believes we'll have football this year?
Apparently the students, student athletes and parents do not even know how things will play out.
Again, LESS THAN 4 WEEKS away from fall camp and now we have parents seeking answers to these valid questions that have been outlined by the Hintons and others players parents. Why is there a lack of communication from the schools and NCAA? You'd think by now we'd at least have some information....
Wake me up in 2021.