With COVID impacting more bowl games Mack Brown would like to see ‘better guidelines’
North Carolina coach Mack Brown observed N.C. State become the latest team to have its season abruptly end without playing in their bowl and raised the same questions many casual fans have wondered as games have been canceled.
“Who pays for it?”
“Where does that money come from?”
“What happens to sponsors?”
“What happens to the fans?”
Brown didn’t have any answers except for the creation of a standard guideline to help navigate bowl season with COVID-19 creating empty stadiums for fans who traveled and bought tickets and empty time slots for broadcast partners expecting to televise a game.
So far, five bowl games have been canceled due to COVID-related issues. Several others have scrambled to find opponents like the Gator Bowl adding Rutgers as a replacement opponent for Wake Forest after Texas A&M could not play because of the amount of players entering COVID protocol.
The Heels are still slated to play the Gamecocks at 11:30 a.m. at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte. Brown said if South Carolina could not play at this late stage, UNC would just return home without playing.
“I really think that none of us expected this to be here (dealing with COVID-19) for two years and, now that it is, it might be a third year,” Brown said during the Duke’s Mayo Bowl video conference on Wednesday. “So if it is, we need to put better guidelines in place for all of us so we all understand.”
Communication could be a start. Coaches and teams in general are secretive about personnel matters before a game, fearing that revealing otherwise would put them at a competitive disadvantage.
Perhaps that’s why N.C. State coach Dave Doeren complained that he felt misled by UCLA before it announced its COVID-19 positives and backed out of playing in the Holiday Bowl.
Brown admitted he hadn’t had any conversations with South Carolina coach Shane Beamer or any representatives or the school regarding testing and the possibility of not playing.
“I don’t know anything about South Carolina’s medical situation,” Brown said. “Haven’t asked, haven’t been told, haven’t heard.”
Beamer did reveal during his video conference on Wednesday that the Gamecocks had positive COVID tests, but “nothing that was going to prevent us from playing in the game.”
“At no point this week did I think we were in danger of not playing this game,” Beamer said. “We’re in good shape and excited about playing.”
UNC also had positive tests, Brown said team doctors “have discouraged us from talking about it publicly.” Brown would not say the exact number, but added “it is very minimal to none.”
Brown said there was no consensus when it comes to determining what’s an acceptable number of players at a position to play. The ACC announced for basketball that if seven scholarship players and one countable coach are healthy, then the game can be played. Football doesn’t have a similar standard in place.
The News & Observer reached out to the ACC Wednesday to clarify some of its current COVID protocols for football but did not immediately hear back.
“We talked about if you have 50 players like the NFL, and you have seven offensive linemen, then two quarterbacks, should you still play regardless of who they are?” Brown said. “None of that ever came to fruition, so there are no real rules.”
Part of the confusion is caused from teams being subject to sometimes vastly different testing policies from conference to conference.
There’s an added layer of local health requirements that could also factor into whether or not a player is cleared to play. UNC has to adhere to Orange County protocols, despite being in Mecklenburg County for the game.
“So it seems like we’re in a world where we’re going to continue to see some COVID issues,” Brown said. “So we’re going to have to look at guidelines, like we do with everything else, to make sure that we handle these moving forward.”
This story was originally published December 29, 2021 at 5:53 PM.