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Let's discuss the reason NCAA sports shouldn't happen... /1
The United States currently has a testing capacity of approximately 675,000 tests a day. There are roughly 70,000 NCAA football participants (source: https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/research/pro_beyond/2020RES_ProbabilityBeyondHSFiguresMethod.pdf). That means, on testing days, approximately 10 percent of U.S. tests would go for #CFB /2
"But Mike - doesn't that we are doing 4.5 million tests a week, so really it's only about 2% of U.S. tests" - Great question, but it's not quite that simple - that assumption assumes players will only be tested once a week. /3
Looking at professional athletes, that once a week doesn't seem likely. Let's say at bare minimum you need to test twice a week - that puts #CFB at 4% of the countries testing capacity. You may say that's not bad. Let's than discuss Title IX /4
If we are playing college football, we can't just have mens sports. Even picking just one woman's sport, let's just NCAA woman's soccer - that adds an additional 30,00 tests, 2x a week (see same NCAA cite in tweet 2) /5
And that's still not probably enough, because you are dealing with the whole college athletic system, so begin factoring coaches, trainers, etc. /6
Realistically, you don't want to tell people only football is allowed, so other sports also will demand to play - and this isn't even factoring increased testing for practice for sports like NCAA BB (M&W) - 35,000 student athletes /7
NCAA Track and Field (M&W) - 60,000 participants, NCAA Baseball and Softball - 60,000 participants, M&W Swimming - 20,00 participants. /8
Besides even the baseline testing - how do you contact trace at shared athletic facilities. The reason the NHL and NBA restarts have been so successful is they are in a bubble. MLB...not so much /9
And the NHL has had 24 teams in that bubble, lets say 50 people a team, which adds up 1200 people. In 3 weeks they used over 18,000 tests (0 Positive - Kudos to Canada!) - which translates to roughly 15 tests a person - or 5/week, not just that 2/week number we used earlier. /10
At that 5 times a week testing cycle, you are using 350,000 tests a week minimum - before factoring in support staff. The argument would be literally to use 7 percent of our national testing on #CFB. /11
We're already suffering through massive delays in testing - do we need to inject more to see an SEC season where other people that need tests could be the difference between life or death? /12
And this thread is just on testing volume! I haven't even factored in risks to student-athletes or support staff. /13
This is what people like Clay Travis are not pricing in - even assuming the kids can't get sick how many other people are you putting at risk because they won't get tested? College athletics is great - but the needs of society outweigh it. /14
