Some teams play by the stove, then wonder why they get burned.
Think Florida football.
Gators coach Dan Mullen called for 90,000 fans to pack their stadium last week — treating the potential superspreader event as collateral damage for a better home-field advantage — only for the game to be postponed after the coronavirus ripped through his team as if it was a mid-tier SEC offense. Mullen and 25 players tested positive.
A top-down culture of indifference was clear.
That’s not the case with the University of Toledo basketball team.
Just the opposite, the irony of the Rockets being in the headlines for an outbreak is that they have respected their opponent.
Coach Tod Kowalczyk has argued for months that the season should be delayed until at least late January, on the off chance a vaccine will then be available, and his staff has set a measured example. One assistant, Walter Offutt, goes so far as to wear a mask and a face shield during practice.
Not surprisingly, before Tuesday, no Toledo player had turned up positive in the team’s many rounds of testing since the summer.
“We've taken this seriously,” Kowalczyk said.
But, of course, the virus does not always pick sides.
Kowalczyk, 54, tested positive for the virus on Sunday, as did six Toledo players — two who have shown mild symptoms — in their weekly testing on Tuesday. (Players will be tested three times per week beginning next month, per NCAA protocols.) The program has halted all activity for two weeks.
Just like that, the virus seeped through a crack, then burst through the dam, offering an it-can-happen-to-anyone reminder of college basketball’s precarious road ahead.
All I can say is best wishes to Toledo basketball and ... grab the snow chains and buckle up.
Toledo’s fortnight in quarantine is but a preview of the fits and starts that could make the 2020-21 season more disjointed than a Pollock painting.
If college football has seemed like a high-wire act — 34 FBS games have been postponed so far — I suspect we’ve seen nothing yet.
As coronavirus cases begin to spike, it doesn’t matter if your favorite basketball team takes every precaution. You don’t need Dr. Fauci to tell you that a close-contact indoor sport could lead to issues. All it takes is one player contracting the virus, and next thing you know, half the team either has it or is in quarantine because of contact tracing protocols.
This year, there are two types of programs: those that have pressed pause and those that will. (Yes, if it needs to be said out loud, you would rather have that pause happen now — as long as everyone has a quick recovery — and the suspicion here is that more programs than we know have encountered the same issues. Trust us, Toledo’s transparency during the pandemic is not the norm.)
Kowalczyk made his concern clear last month in a letter to the NCAA.
“I was totally in favor of the NCAA delaying the season until the Spring and having an early Summer Final Four,” he wrote. “[That] would have allowed time for a vaccine to be in place and much safer playing/game conditions. Let’s be honest, every program will have positive tests and long quarantine times.”
Now, as we plow ahead toward a Nov. 25 start date, I asked Kowalczyk if it was possible to have a legit season.
“We're not going to have a legit season,” he said. “We’re going to have a season.”
And that’s worth it?
I think of this season and I think of Clark Griswold hopping in the motel pool with Christie Brinkley. “This is crazy! This is crazy! This is crazy!”
Still, I’ll stay off the soap box today. I question all of this at the same time that, selfishly, I can’t wait for the return of Big Ten and MAC football and basketball, and I appreciate the players and coaches who want to make it work, as best they can, including at Toledo. “The virus has to change how we live,” Kowalczyk said, “but you can’t stop living.”
And I can’t stop watching.
Now, hands at 10 and 2, everyone. Ready or not, the college basketball season is coming.
First Published October 21, 2020, 11:02 p.m.
