Syracuse Football: Some discouraging signs for the 2020 season

As Syracuse football looks ahead to the 2020 campaign, a handful of big-time programs have reported high numbers of positive COVID-19 tests.

Several big-time college football teams, including fellow Atlantic Coast Conference member Clemson, have announced large numbers of positive COVID-19 cases, and that’s not good news as Syracuse football and its peers around the country hope for an on-time 2020 term, if one occurs at all.

To date, Orange officials have provided no public update that I’m aware of as it relates to positive tests within the ‘Cuse program, and it appears that the squad is not expected to disclose its testing results, according to various media reports.

Matthew Gutierrez, a staff writer for The Athletic, tweeted a few days ago, citing an unnamed source, that Syracuse football has had “only one or two” positive COVID-19 tests since players returned to the Hill on June 8.

Clemson’s athletics department announced on June 19 that, “Thus far in the month of June, Clemson Athletics student-athletes and staff have completed 315 tests for COVID-19 with a total of 28 positive results.”

Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports and other journalists have reported that of those 28 positive cases, 23 are from members of Clemson’s football team.

Other schools, such as Texas and Kansas State, have disclosed a relatively high number of positive COVID-19 cases. The Kansas State athletics department said in a press release on June 20 that it has “paused all voluntary workouts for football student-athletes for 14 days following the most recent COVID-19 test results.”

According to Thamel, the University of Houston has also paused voluntary training, while he noted in his article that Sports Illustrated reported this past Saturday “that at least 30 LSU players have been in quarantine.”

Recent positive COVID-19 cases at other high-major crews aren’t reassuring as Syracuse football prepares for its 2020 term.

While I’m not a medical expert, I don’t believe it’s all that surprising that players at squads across the country are unfortunately testing positive for the novel coronavirus.

The pandemic is seemingly not going away for some period of time, and it’s unrealistic for people to think that the testing of football players at the ‘Cuse and elsewhere would turn up zero positive COVID-19 cases.

Let’s face it, by nature, football is a close contact sport, and we haven’t even reached the point of actual walk-throughs and padded practices taking place, both of which are slated to happen later this summer.

That being said, if a dozen, or dozens, of players at these high-major programs are testing positive at this juncture, that can’t help but sound the alarm to some extent, according to recent media reports. These developments appear to have created a sense of pessimism that perhaps the 2020 stanza could get halted – or, at a minimum, altered.

“I’m way less convinced we will play [football] than I was a few weeks ago,” one athletic director told Thamel.

Several dozen Syracuse players returned to campus about two weeks ago for voluntary work-outs, and the team has a pre-season plan in place following approval by the NCAA. It would of course prove a total bummer if the 2020 campaign ultimately doesn’t transpire, but safety will always have to come first.