Ian Nicholas, Reporter
@IanNicholas25
High school football players across Connecticut watch helplessly as ESPN streams high school football across America. They watch their fellow classmates gear up for their fall sports seasons. This is why the peaceful yet powerful ‘Let Us Play CT’ movement has exploded. A protest Wednesday evening at the State Capital Building gathered well over one thousand of Connecticut’s football players, parents, and fans, representing over 40 schools. Wednesday’s protest was the largest of three gatherings in the span of four days, including events held in both West Hartford on Sunday, September 6, and New Canaan’s Dunning Field on Labor Day Monday.
Full-contact football has been deemed a high-risk sport both nationally and state-wide, according to Governor Ned Lamont, even though 32 states will be playing football this Fall. The COVID metrics and football stories both in Connecticut and nationwide support a season now, with Governor Lamont needing to take them into account and make a move immediately.
Utah was the first state to start playing high school football, back on August 14. “Three weeks into Utah’s High School Football season, COVID cases continue to drop… the number of new daily cases in Utah has continued to decline significantly over the past six weeks,” this article said. According to a NY Times article titled “Is Your State Doing Enough Coronavirus Testing?” Utah’s COVID numbers and testing are much worse than Connecticut’s. Their positive test rate is 9%, while Connecticut’s sits at just 0.7%. By playing football, Utah is showing the whole country that the sport can be played safely and in full by taking the proper precautions. They’ve played over 1000 football games, and, according to this article, there’s been “zero reports of community COVID spread” over a month-long span.
Not only in Utah, but in Alabama, Indiana, Tennessee, and even Alaska, data has shown that through three weeks of their football seasons, there hasn’t been a significant spike in COVID cases in any of these states. Proper guidelines and actions are being taken in-game to make sure the virus stays at bay. In Utah’s games, according to this article, “capacity maxed at 25%, spectators donning masks & seated apart, and some high schools even opted for electronic tickets to be scanned upon entering the stadium.” Why can’t the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and Department of Public Health in Connecticut set similar guidelines?
During another game at Timpview High, the school’s Athletic Director paused the game momentarily to remind fans in the stands to social distance and put their masks back on.
Utah and other states are proving the sport isn’t causing a problem in the battle against COVID, hence debunking that football is “high-risk” in regards to the spread of the virus. Connecticut doesn’t need fans in attendance- all the athletes and coaches have been begging for is a chance to play the game they’ve dedicated their lives to while showing they, like states playing right now, can be responsible during the pandemic.
Connecticut has been one of the safest states in the nation, in regards to COVID, since mid-June. “Connecticut’s COVID-19 positivity rate remains below 1% and hospitalizations remained flat,” NBC Connecticut reported. Governor Lamont confirmed this, tweeting that “14,234 tests were administered and 101 came back positive. This is a 0.7% positivity rate.”
So why are fourteen states with dramatically higher positivity rates- including South Dakota, Alabama, Missouri, and Idaho, all with rates above 10%- playing football this fall as planned, while Connecticut is not? I understand Connecticut wants to keep up its terrific work with COVID, but the numbers support fall football through and through.
On top of all this, private sports leagues proved all summer long that high-risk sports can be done safely. There was no spike within the programs, the proper precautions were put in place to succeed, and it was executed very well. How about youth football? Does it make any sense that if you’re in 8th grade and coached by somebody’s dad, you’re playing football right now; but if you’re in 9th grade working with coaches who’ve been certified by the state and have had formal player safety training, you can’t play? You can answer that question yourself.
To put it simply, the DPH’s ‘recommendation’ against full-contact football is not reasonable at all. Just like last month, it’s not filled with the numbers and health metrics you would expect the DPH to have during these times. Their argument is fear-based around what could happen during the playing of football, not the current state of COVID metrics or results from playing around the country. The players who protested all of last week wore masks, stood socially distanced, and were respectful with their opinions as they pleaded Governor Ned Lamont to take executive action and save their season. Now, Governor Lamont simply has to deal with common sense, and make a decision on the status of full-contact football in his state.
