UNC Football Taking Extra COVID-19 Precautions as Workouts Start

College football season is approaching fast, and teams across the nation are still scrambling to find protocols that work best for them amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

UNC head coach Mack Brown met with the media earlier this week to discuss how he and the Tar Heels have handled the situation from their end.

Players arrived on campus in four different phases throughout the month of June without any troubles, but earlier this month it was revealed 37 UNC student-athletes and staff members tested positive for the virus.

Some of those players were part of the football team, said Brown, which shut down practice for a week. The team also shut its weight room down temporarily and stopped having players run together in groups.

The head coach said none of those individuals experienced any major symptoms, but they were quarantined for 10 days or until the symptoms were gone before going through a heart checkup. Players returned to the practice field last Thursday and are now wearing masks in the weight room and when they walk out onto the field — but they take the masks off when doing work outdoors.

For better or for worse, positive tests are a reality that isn’t going away any time soon, said Brown. The idea is to do everything possible to try and keep those numbers low, and keep players from having to miss games.

“We’re talking to people all over the country and it’s everywhere,” Brown said. “It just goes from nothing to fast, and that’s why we closed the weight room down and I got people out of the office and just said, ‘Let’s take a deep breath here and let’s let our medical people look at this more closely and determine exactly what we’re doing and how we’re doing it–and make sure that we take a look at everybody’s safety.’”

At this point, said Brown, no player has come to the coaching staff wanting to opt out of playing this season. He said Tuesday any player who does will still have their scholarship honored and will not face any repercussions.

The program has also ordered face shields for the coaches to wear and six-foot long sticks to ensure proper social distancing, as coach-involved workouts are slated to begin on Friday.

“We’re going to have to stand that far apart during practice,” Brown said about the sticks. “We’re having to learn to practice differently, being led by the medical staffs. That’s what we’ll be learning this weekend—one of the major things with the walkthroughs—is how do we practice to make sure we stay safe?”

The Tar Heels are less than six weeks from their scheduled opener in Orlando against UCF on Sept. 4, but they are still awaiting a decision from the ACC on July 30 about any potential scheduling changes.

Both the Big Ten and the PAC-12 have already announced they will have a conference-only schedule in the fall.

With such a short time frame before the season begins, UNC can also not afford to have any more setbacks with the virus, like another temporary shutdown that would put another dent into preparations.

When talking about the whispers of moving the college football season into the spring, Brown said he won’t plan for anything different until he is given word to do so.

”I expect us to play college football this fall,” the head coach said. “It’ll be determined by medical staffs across the country. And how safe are the players? How safe are the staffs? How safe are the fans? That’s still fluid.”

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UNC Football Taking Extra COVID-19 Precautions as Workouts Start

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