NCAA OK’s Voluntary Workouts, Beginning June 1
Big news from the NCAA: football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball are allowed to participate in a month’s worth of voluntary athletic activities.
Yahoo! reporter Pete Thamel broke Wednesday’s big news of the day in the world of college sports. Football and basketball players (both men’s and women’s) will be allowed to participate in voluntary practices at the beginning of next month.
— Sources: The NCAA Division I Council voted to approve voluntary athletic activities in football, MBB and WBB to start June 1st and go through June 30th. There had been a moratorium on that through May 31st. Other sports will be acted on on a later date.
Few things to keep in mind:
- It’s still up to the conferences to decide whether or not schools may have formal practices.
- It’s still up to the schools to decide whether or not students are allowed to come back to campus.
- It’s still up to the state governors to decide how socially distant the people in their states have to be from one another.
- I have not seen any school at any level introduce a plan to fight against the coronavirus for when students and faculty all come back to their respective campuses.
- We still don’t have a coronavirus vaccine readily available in the United States.
- Last week, this same NCAA extended its recruiting dead period through June 30. Dead period means coaches may not have in-person contact with recruits or parents.
The NCAA might say “sure” here, but the NCAA isn’t actually the ultimate deciding force for coaches and college kids to live by. There are a lot of other things that have to happen before college sports (not just these three) can begin again, and there isn’t just one person or one group to give that final nod of approval.
This is just one (still big) decision that the NCAA made by talking to and serving the self-interests of the universities that it’s made up of. I’m of the mindset that the NCAA probably would’ve included volleyball, soccer, field hockey, and other sports in this update if enough schools would’ve vouched for them.
