Laura Rutledge: College Football Players Growing Concerned About Playing Amidst Pandemic

Just how serious is college football's coronavirus problem? Some of the biggest programs - LSU, Clemson, Alabama - in the nation have already been hit with enough cases to put dozens of players into quarantine. Can they actually control it? Or is this just the tip of the iceberg? Laura Rutledge was on Get Up this morning and it sounds like college football's problems are just beginning.

Transcribed by 24/7 Sports:

""I'm hearing there are many more cases we don’t know about. That’s to be expected, but I think this is more widespread and a larger volume of cases than people realize in college football,” Rutledge said. “I’m getting a sense of concern from players that wasn’t there just a couple weeks ago. There’s actually some players who are trying to figure out how they could write a letter to the NCAA expressing their concerns. But here’s the problem— they want to remain anonymous because they’re concerned that all of the sudden maybe a university would say, ‘Hey, if you’re that worried about this, just quarantine and don't play.' It’s a double-edged sword that while they’re worried about their health, they still really want to play football and want to be given a fair chance to compete. This will continue to be very complicated and I think you’ll see a lot more schools have to enforce quarantine. And still, all of the (athletic directors) and coaches I’ve spoken to are planning on starting college football on time.”"

If it's this hard to get 100 kids on campus safely, how are these schools going to do thousands all at once? Like many of the problems with this virus, it's the unknown that is most terrifying. What are the longterm effects? What if you are asymptomatic and spread it to someone who gets really sick? And what's going on with teams that aren't reporting any positive tests? Paul Finebaum wonders if we can even trust coaches to be honest about tests. This is why UCLA players want a third party involved.