Unsplash/Tim Mossholder
While we’re inching closer to both the NFL and college football seasons kicking off, high school football has been going on for weeks now in a number of states around the country. Sure, high schoolers are younger than college and professional athletes therefore, as the data shows, are less susceptible to the coronavirus causing serious health issues. Then again, most high schoolers live with their parents and siblings so there is still a risk of spreading the virus.
Having said that, FootballScoop has reported that there have been over 1,000 high school football games played over the past few weeks and it hasn’t resulted in one single outbreak in a community.
“1,000 plus games now in the books and the news is good. To our knowledge, there have been no reported cases of significant community spread following a high school football game.
High schools in the state of Utah have been playing for 4+ weeks now. Alabama, Indiana, Tennessee and Alaska have all been playing for 3+ weeks. A significant number of states have now been playing for 2+ weeks.
Data shows there has not been a significant spike in COVID cases in any of the states that have been playing football for the last 2-4 weeks.”
The list of states where high school football games have been played since at least August 28: Utah, Alaska, Indiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Texas, Wyoming, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.
It’s encouraging to see a report like this after so much uncertainty heading into the season and with practically every state around the country having different plans and guidelines in place for schools and sports.
With high schools having success playing football this Fall, it makes the decisions of both the Big Ten and Pac-12 to not play football this season that much more head-scratching.
While you could argue that playing it safe is never a bad plan, the fact that high schools are showing that they have the resources to play sports this Fall and major college athletic conferences around the country have canceled sports until 2021 has created quite the unique situation.