Lucas: Safety at forefront of football’s return for Alvarez
September 18, 2020 | Football, Mike Lucas
Badgers’ AD played key role in Big Ten’s return-to-play team effort
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BY MIKE LUCAS
UWBadgers.com Senior Writer
MADISON, Wis. — When Barry Alvarez went to bed Tuesday night, he wasn't sure if the next 24 hours would bring clarity to the Big Ten's attempt to play football in 2020, even though the availability of rapid antigen testing offered some real promise as a potential game-changer.
"I was anticipating and hoping," said Wisconsin's athletic director. "But I didn't know."
Alvarez didn't know any more than what he had gleaned from four different Zoom meetings on Sunday with the various factions entrusted with impacting and making the decision. An unscheduled teleconference that night only underlined the fluidity of the process. It was Sunday, right?
"I've lost all track of time," Alvarez said with a sigh. "I've even lost track of what day it is."
Admitting that "sometimes you'd get so frustrated when you thought you had some things done" only to have them come undone, he has had a few things to sleep on as an executive member of the Big Ten's Return to Competition Task Force and the chair of the football schedule subcommittee.
"There wasn't one person on that committee that didn't have an opinion and that was good," he said. "There was always discussion. And there was a lot of thinking outside of the box. You'd come to a consensus and then 24 hours later, someone would have other ideas.
"There were some nights, I'd get ready to go to bed and I'd just ache — there were so many things going on. You're always thinking about what you can do. How are you going to do it? What do you have to prepare for the next day? What's the next step? You've got to get some answers."
At seven o'clock on Wednesday morning, Alvarez got a phone call from the Big Ten office.
"I was just glad," he said after being updated, "and relieved."
There were finally some answers. The presidents and chancellors had unanimously agreed to reinstate the football season beginning the weekend of Oct. 23-24. Teams will play eight games over eight weeks with a bonus game in week nine matching like seeds (1-7) from the two divisions if workable.
"The bottom line is we're going to play football," Alvarez said. "The decisions were made for the right reasons. The postponement was made for the right reasons — for the safety of our student-athletes. Our chancellors and presidents acted prudently. They made the right decision at the time."
(The Big Ten postponed all fall sports, including football, on August 11.)
"They were open-minded enough to sit back and look at the answers and the solutions for the questions that they had," Alvarez said about the Council of Presidents and Chancellors (COP/C). "And, quite frankly, at the time, there were a number (of questions) and I agreed with them.
"The questions that were proposed to them, the medical questions that were out there, without them being answered, there was no way we could put our student-athletes back on the field. But now we have answers," he added with conviction.
"The testing is an answer. Dealing with the heart situation (myocarditis) … we have answers for that, protocol. Contact tracing is answered. In the end that's the reason we moved forward because the safety questions were answered, the medical questions were answered by our doctors."
Alvarez was one of the Task Force members featured via Zoom on the Big Ten Network's reinstatement telecast Wednesday. Joining him in the Brady Bunch-like TV squares were commissioner Kevin Warren, Northwestern president Morton Schapiro, Ohio State team physician Dr. James Borchers, Penn State athletic director Sandy Barbour and Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips.
That morning, Alvarez taped a video for the school's website and conducted a Zoom Q & A with local media. Sorting through additional interview requests, he accepted an invitation to tape something for NBC's Today Show. On Saturday, he will appear on ESPN's Gameday. And yet he continued to downplay his role insisting, "You're talking about a lot of collaboration between a lot of people."
Alvarez singled out one such person especially close to home — Wisconsin chancellor Rebecca Blank — noting, "She has done a nice job of being involved and listening. She has been an ally. She has been approachable and she has really been a big part of this. I appreciate what she has done."
One of Alvarez' teammates on the Task Force made a favorable impression, too.
"Jim Borchers was a rock star," he said. "If I had to pick one person who had the most to do with this whole thing, it would be him. He jumped in with both feet. He tied a lot of things together with the heart disease and the protocols that were necessary for the chancellors and presidents to see.
"I'm sure he'd be the first to give credit to other people. But he spearheaded and presented it to everyone. We owe him a debt of gratitude. He's been on every one of these meetings, every one of these Zoom calls. He's the one who answered a lot of the questions. He's been unbelievable."
Unbeknownst to Alvarez, he had crossed paths before with Borchers.
In 1992, Alvarez's third season as Wisconsin's head coach, the Badgers upset No. 12 Ohio State at Camp Randall Stadium for the first milestone victory of the Alvarez era. ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit was the Buckeyes quarterback. Their long snapper, wearing jersey No. 50, was Borchers, a walk-on. Small world.
During the BTN telecast, Borchers outlined some of the protocols, not the least of which was a cardiac testing component and requiring players to sit out 21 days after testing positive for COVID-19. That entails a two-week quarantine from their team plus a seven-day transition back to football.
"The strategy, to be honest, is one where we're trying to rapidly identify anyone that may have the virus and immediately remove them from their population, whether that be practice or competition," said Borchers, who co-chaired the medical subcommittee with Barbour.
"It's similar to what you've heard from the PAC-12 with the use of rapid antigen testing. Those tests and their ability to detect those folks who are positive and using confirmatory PCR testing rather than just using PCR testing, which may require a long turnaround time — in some places, maybe 24 hours or longer — we believe gives us a great advantage.
"Just like everything in medicine, it's not like we invented this. But we investigated it and feel very comfortable with that approach moving forward. We know that if we can test daily with rapid testing in these small populations of teams, we're very likely to reduce infectiousness inside practice and game competitions to near 100 percent.
"We can never say 100 percent. But we feel very confident with that approach that we'll be able to make our practice and competition environments as risk fee as we possibly can with this testing approach and that approach across all of our 14 institutions."
Wisconsin's Paul Chryst was among the head coaches who huddled with Alvarez on the scheduling subcommittee. The others were Ohio State's Ryan Day, Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald and Penn State's James Franklin. Alvarez was most appreciative of everyone's input.
"Our coaches were involved in this all the way through and they have more invested than anybody else," Alvarez said. "I can complain all I want but these guys are managing their assistants and their teams. They're juggling how you practice, what you practice and how you teach. They're keeping the players from getting disappointed. Those guys had a hell of a harder job than I did."
Alvarez popped his head into Chryst's office after the BTN show.
"We talk frequently, we talked late last night," Alvarez said. "He's really excited for the players and his staff. They've worked hard in preparation for this though you never knew if you'd get to this day. Now you have a date when you're going to start. Now your practices are a little more meaningful."
Alvarez had initial concerns to practicing.
"How do you meet? How do you practice? How do you keep social distancing during your practice and in meetings and in all the situations when you have close quarters?" he posed. "Everyone has learned through his pandemic how you alter what you've done in the past.
"To me that's the most difficult thing. It's not status quo, 'This is what we've done before, this is how we're going to meet, this is how we're going to practice.' It has all been altered. That was the hardest thing, trusting your players and coaches to change how you go about your day-to-day routine.
"As a coach, you have to have a plan. But you always have to be able to adjust and think on your feet because things will always change."
Glancing at the bookshelves in his Kellner Hall office, he said, "No one can ever teach you how to get through a pandemic and organize a football season. There's not a book over there titled 'How you handle a Pandemic.' We're all learning on the run.
"Way back when, I can remember Paul (Chryst) and I and Chris McIntosh (the deputy AD) were talking about, 'How the hell do you play football with contact tracing? You can't do it.' But now we'll test every day. If you tested a player yesterday and if today, he's positive, he's out.
"Do it every day, you've got a chance. Now when you hit the practice field, it's a clean field. If everybody in the league is doing it, now you've got a clean game field. When the chancellors and presidents initially met with the doctors, those questions weren't answered."
When asked if he was confident that the Big Ten could complete the proposed nine game season, he said, "Certainly, there are no guarantees. I hope our players will be disciplined enough and police one another so that we can get through this. It's got to be important to them."
Believing that it is important to Wisconsin's student-athletes, he pointed out, "We'll ask them to be leaders for the rest of the campus and our community and take the responsibility that they have not only to play, but to make our community and campus a safe place."
How many practices will it take to get a team ready for competition?
"Just give us a number — we'll figure it out — Paul is the same as me," said Alvarez. "He has done a great job of communicating with this group. I think we've got a chance to be a very good team. I've been impressed with what I've seen physically. I feel confident that we match up with anyone as far as strength and conditioning. We're in a good place right now."
So is Alvarez. While acknowledging there were times when the Big Ten was under attack ("We were like a piñata for a month") and he was personally frustrated ("I was in the tank a lot, I really was"), he was in much better spirits after getting that early morning phone call Wednesday.
"I feel good, I'm fired up that we're going to play football," he enthused. "I'm excited that the Big Ten is going to be a part of it, we're back in the mix. That invigorates me. This is my time of year."
