AMHERST — COVID-19 protocols have largely become a thing of the past in the UMass football program due to the high level of vaccinations among players, coaches and staff.
With fall camp beginning Friday, 88 percent of the UMass football program is fully vaccinated — two weeks out from the second shot of a two-shot vaccine or after receiving a one-shot vaccine.
Around 96 percent have received both shots and are within the two-week waiting period. Bell said that number would hit 100 percent Friday before camp opens.
“It kind of feels like you’re back to normal a little bit. Hope it stays that way. We’re excited to have that rhythm you normally have going into the season,” coach Walt Bell said. “We’re being led to believe right now if you’re fully vaccinated there’s no such thing as contact tracing. With deltas and delta pluses and lambdas and tri lambdas, with all that stuff we don’t know where we’re going to stand. But the ability to eliminate contact tracing and add some stability to your roster is huge.”
Three primary factors contributed to the rate. No. 1: vaccinations are required for UMass students.
“Unless you are fully vaccinated you can’t come on this campus, which means you can’t play football,” Bell said. “Obviously that is a huge part of it.”
No. 2: it’s a competitive advantage. Not being vaccinated and being exposed could mean players miss practices or don’t play in games.
“Regardless of how our kids felt about do I get vaccinated, do I not get vaccinated, this isn’t fully approved yet, whatever combination of feelings you can have personally about it, our kids love winning and they care about winning more than they care about that,” Bell said.
The Minutemen bonded closely during last year’s odd circumstances and encouraged each other to get the vaccine for the good of the team as well as their own health.
“We feel like we have every single person that we need. It was a need to get the vaccination so it would prevent anyone missing games. it’s been very important to this team,” UMass senior Avien Peah said. “A lot of guys got it early, as a matter of fact.”
And No. 3: Some players’ families had to deal with complications from the virus. It made it more real for some of the skeptics.
“A lot of our players are from all over the country and we’ve had some of our players’ families deal with issues, and it’s a very real thing,” Bell said. “Like most human beings, we’re all inherently selfish but I think when you’re able to see people that directly have problems with those issues you’re more willing to get vaccinated.”
UMass will conduct its first of 30 fall camp practices Friday and open the season Sept. 4 at Pittsburgh.
NIL IMPACT – Bell, a proponent of athletes being able to profit off their name, image and likeness, said its unclear how the rule change will affect the sport.
“I don’t know if anyone in college football will know how to feel for probably six to eight months,” Bell said.
He brought up former Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, who would have been a “middle to lower tier” endorser at the start of his eventual Heisman season.
“He goes to Alabama, plays out of his mind on national television, and from that day for the rest of his college football career, he’s probably the highest paid athlete in all of collegiate athletics,” Bell said. “Instances like that are going to make people’s profiles skyrocket and inherently what that is going to do. Nobody knows.”
For Bell, it’s similar to conscription. He said if people can be contractually obligated to put their body in harms’ way for their country, they should be able to make a living off of their image.
“I think that it’s fair I think it’s just. Do we know the one term ramifications of it? No. Is there a high probability in the future that this damages the current collegiate model? Probably. Could this limit full athletic scholarships as the game starts to proliferate and grow solely on financial means, could It damage that? Yeah,” he said. “Everyone, I think, understood what we were doing and what we were getting into as a profession. It’s the fair thing and it’s the right thing to do, but it’s going to definitely change things.”
REALIGNMENT CAROUSEL – College football’s tectonic plates will likely begin to shift soon with Texas and Oklahoma announcing their intention to join the SEC.
As conferences and schools posture ahead of potential seismic realignment, where does that leave the Minutemen? It’s above Bell’s pay grade.
“It undoubtedly is going to create a shakeup. At what level the shakeup is, I’m not sure,” he said. “My job as the head football coach is to position ourselves to be as good as we can possibly be. My boss’ job, our athletic director — Ryan Bamford — and chancellor (Kumble) Subbaswamy, their job is to make sure they put our athletic department in position to be in best-case scenario moving forward for the long term.”
DREARY OUTLOOK – CBS Sports, Athlon Sports and Pro Football Focus all released their preseason college football rankings this week.
Out of 130 teams, PFF’s Elo rankings had UMass 126th, Athlon placed the Minutemen No. 129 and CBS ranked them as the worst team in the Football Bowl Subdivision, 130th.
“If anything it’s more so motivation. We just want to prove everybody wrong,” Peah said. “We’ve had a lot of doubt in past years. We want to work together as a team and prove outsiders wrong.”
Bell said he and his staff have the most competitive roster since he took over.
“One we’re excited to go compete with,” he said. “If we stay healthy, we coach well and we play well, I think we’ve got a chance to be better than people think.”
ANOTHER ROUND – The Harvard men’s basketball team announced a continuation of its series with UMass. The Crimson will visit Amherst on Dec. 4.
Four of the teams’ past five meetings have been decided by five points or fewer. The Crimson are riding a three-game winning streak against UMass.