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Sounds like every conference is discussing plans on how to return to play. Really informative article from the Athletic:
Some highlights:
The NCAA’s chief medical officer said Friday that he’s operating under the “working assumption” that college football players would need somewhere from four to six weeks before playing games to mitigate the risk of catastrophic and overuse injuries.
“It would mean that you’ve reached a certain level of fitness, just from a strength and conditioning point of view, and that’s going to require that there be certain sorts of fitness testing that that’s done,” Dr. Brian Hainline told The Athletic. “That ranges from functional testing so that you know you’re really using the kinetic chain part of your body properly to the ability to do repetitive sprints and to be able to recover. It’s not just about what you can do, but the degree to which your body can recover — that’s a very important part of it.
The NCAA’s Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports has been working on various models under the assumption that the infectious disease component of COVID-19 is under control enough that public health officials begin to re-open society, which is admittedly “a big assumption,” Hainline said.
Another NCAA working group is also looking at all the legislative policies and rules that may need to be modified, given that these athletes missed the spring season and the summer ahead is still so uncertain.
Hainline said that the working group is looking at potentially giving football teams permission to hold multiple contact practices in the same day, otherwise known as two-a-days. The NCAA banned two-a-days in 2017.
“So, one of the things we’ve talked about being of the utmost important is, what are the things that we have to put in place relative to return-to-play … for them to reacclimatize into a grueling, physical, competitive environment to make sure we avoid muscle tissue issues, sprains and strains and all of those type of things that can occur because you haven’t been working out with the same level of intensity that we have historically prepared with.
“They just can’t come back and play. Those days are gone.”
Hainline said that a few other pieces to the puzzle need to be in place before football players can return to campus for preseason camp. The first is the return to campus of the general student body.
“So, you’re assuming that the school has returned to some sort of normalcy,” Hainline said. “It might not be the complete normalcy, but students are back on campus. The other working assumption that is very important is that the local healthcare structure has to be able to operate normally to take care of new injuries and illnesses that are part of any sort of sporting environment. So, a local hospital can’t be operating with 90 percent of its patients essentially in the equivalent of an ICU.
“It’s also important that health care providers, the athletic trainers and physicians have the proper amount of personal protective equipment, if there is a potential new case, and that they have a surveillance system set up so that they can take care of a potential new case properly. That’s another huge assumption because the current infrastructure that we have doesn’t allow that to happen.”
Some highlights:
The NCAA’s chief medical officer said Friday that he’s operating under the “working assumption” that college football players would need somewhere from four to six weeks before playing games to mitigate the risk of catastrophic and overuse injuries.
“It would mean that you’ve reached a certain level of fitness, just from a strength and conditioning point of view, and that’s going to require that there be certain sorts of fitness testing that that’s done,” Dr. Brian Hainline told The Athletic. “That ranges from functional testing so that you know you’re really using the kinetic chain part of your body properly to the ability to do repetitive sprints and to be able to recover. It’s not just about what you can do, but the degree to which your body can recover — that’s a very important part of it.
The NCAA’s Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports has been working on various models under the assumption that the infectious disease component of COVID-19 is under control enough that public health officials begin to re-open society, which is admittedly “a big assumption,” Hainline said.
Another NCAA working group is also looking at all the legislative policies and rules that may need to be modified, given that these athletes missed the spring season and the summer ahead is still so uncertain.
Hainline said that the working group is looking at potentially giving football teams permission to hold multiple contact practices in the same day, otherwise known as two-a-days. The NCAA banned two-a-days in 2017.
“So, one of the things we’ve talked about being of the utmost important is, what are the things that we have to put in place relative to return-to-play … for them to reacclimatize into a grueling, physical, competitive environment to make sure we avoid muscle tissue issues, sprains and strains and all of those type of things that can occur because you haven’t been working out with the same level of intensity that we have historically prepared with.
“They just can’t come back and play. Those days are gone.”
Hainline said that a few other pieces to the puzzle need to be in place before football players can return to campus for preseason camp. The first is the return to campus of the general student body.
“So, you’re assuming that the school has returned to some sort of normalcy,” Hainline said. “It might not be the complete normalcy, but students are back on campus. The other working assumption that is very important is that the local healthcare structure has to be able to operate normally to take care of new injuries and illnesses that are part of any sort of sporting environment. So, a local hospital can’t be operating with 90 percent of its patients essentially in the equivalent of an ICU.
“It’s also important that health care providers, the athletic trainers and physicians have the proper amount of personal protective equipment, if there is a potential new case, and that they have a surveillance system set up so that they can take care of a potential new case properly. That’s another huge assumption because the current infrastructure that we have doesn’t allow that to happen.”
