Florida Gators coach Dan Mullen was ripped by the media, ridiculed by the fans and even rebuked by the school’s own athletic director and infectious disease expert last season when he encouraged UF’s administration to ignore CDC guidelines and “pack the Swamp” in the middle of a raging pandemic.
Who would have ever thought that several months later, Mullen would be the encouraging voice of reason and the shining example of how college football head coaches should handle the bafflingly politicized issue of COVID-19 vaccinations.
As we head into yet another coronavirus-cursed college football season with the Delta variant wreaking havoc on our country, sports leagues again are being forced to react. And Mullen’s reaction, in contrast to some of his college football coaching colleagues, has been a breath of fresh (and hopefully uninfected) air. Mullen has gone from COVID culprit last year to pandemic paragon this season.
He is one of the way-too-few college coaches who have made a public display of getting vaccinated and even tweeted out a photo of himself getting a COVID shot. He has also made it clear to the players on his team that he expects them to be vaccinated, too, and they have responded. Florida’s team is well over 90 percent vaccinated and that can be directly attributed to the leadership of Mullen and AD Scott Stricklin.
“If our society, our state would follow the same example, our population probably wouldn’t be seeing the variant we are seeing right now,” Stricklin told the Sentinel last week.
Added Mullen: “I think we’re very fortunate that we’re able to educate our guys. We have access to a lot of people, we have access to the top doctors at Shands Hospital. We have access to information and meetings that we can educate everybody so that everybody feels comfortable with what the situation is and feels comfortable with the opportunity to go get vaccinated and where that leads us.”
A standing ovation, please, for Coach Dan Mullen!!!
And for all of the other coaches out there — FSU’s Mike Norvell and Miami’s Manny Diaz among them — who have let their players and their fans know they’ve been vaccinated.
Now let’s juxtapose Mullen’s stance with new Auburn head coach Bryan Harsin, who tested positive for COVID-19 last week and remains in isolation away from his team. Harsin is reportedly asymptomatic but has steadfastly refused to say whether he has been vaccinated and has even had to fend off the rumors and rumblings that he is anti-vaccination.
Harsin, I believe, is making a huge mistake. While it’s everyone’s personal choice to get vaccinated and keep the decision private, Harsin is a very public figure who should be spreading the word about getting vaccinated. In fact, in many ways, the head football coach is the public face of an entire university, not to mention the leader of the football team.
And leaders are supposed to lead by example.
If Harsin wants his players to be vaccinated so they can avoid routine testing and stringent contact tracing then, by gosh, he should be vaccinated, too. Every major conference in college football has made it resoundingly clear that teams unable to play this season because they do not have enough players due to COVID-19 will be charged with a forfeit. And having a bunch of unvaccinated players on your team exponentially increases the likelihood of forfeited games because it increases the frequency of COVID testing.
For instance, in the ACC, fully vaccinated players aren’t even required to be tested. However, according to ESPN, unvaccinated players on a team with a vaccination rate of less than 85% must be tested at least three times a week while unvaccinated players on a team with a vaccination rate of 85% or higher must be tested only once a week.
What are the ramifications of having unvaccinated players? Well, just ask North Carolina State, which got eliminated (via forfeiture) from the College World Series because of a COVID outbreak that reportedly started when two unvaccinated players tested positive. This set into motion NCAA guidelines that forced the entire NC State team to be tested. If the two original players had been vaccinated, they likely would not have been tested, four other positive tests would not have been discovered and the Wolfpack might be national champions today.
Which is why I don’t know why more college coaches aren’t like Mullen or Alabama’s Nick Saban, who put out public-service video announcements encouraging people to get vaccinated. It is statistically clear that getting vaccinated is the best way to save lives and our best hope of beating the pandemic, but it’s also the best way to win football games — or, at least, avoid losing them (via forfeiture).
Make no mistake about it, coaches make mega-million-dollar salaries for one purpose — to win football games. And is there any question that encouraging players — and fans — to get vaccinated helps you win football games? Vaccinations not only keep your best players on the field, it makes your home fans more comfortable about buying tickets and attending games. And the more fans you have and the more noise they make, the better chance the home team has of winning.
If college football coaches are asking fans to pile into stadiums during a time when the Delta variant sweeps the country then isn’t it their duty to help make that stadium experience as safe as possible? Especially with more and more young people facing serious illness.
This is why the commissioners of all of the Power Five conferences are working with an organization called The COVID Collaborative to get people vaccinated. Writes the COVID Collaborative in a statement on its website: “Evidence shows that events, public service announcements, and social media initiatives involving coaches and players can make a real difference in promoting vaccination among fans. Fans will often act on the advice of their favorite coach or player, and to help the ‘team,’ even when they wouldn’t otherwise act to protect themselves or their community.”
Sadly, here we are only a couple of days away from games being played, and, still, there are too-damn-few coaches like Dan Mullen who are trying to make a difference and stop this freaking pandemic from disrupting yet another college football season.
