Iowa won’t pull the scholarships of athletes who choose to not compete during the coronavirus pandemic.
With sports slowly returning across America, we’re nearing a point when athletes are going to have to start getting back to work. Naturally, there are a lot of concerns about the virus and the health of everyone involved. Iowa Hawkeyes athletic director Gary Barta will honor the scholarships of athletes who choose to sit the season out. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
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Barta recently said the following about the situation, according to Yahoo Sports:
If we have a student-athlete who chooses not to return they still will remain in good standing with their team. We will work to mitigate the concerns that they raise but we would not have a student-athlete, during this year, if they felt that they couldn’t compete or train because of this COVID-19 virus, they would not lose their status or their scholarship.
I’ve actually been wondering about this situation a lot. I’m not sure a school can force an athlete to compete during a pandemic.
Even if they could do it from a legal standpoint, it’d be a PR nightmare if an athlete contracted the virus after being forced to play.
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Due to that fact, it seems like schools will have to let athletes remain sidelined if they choose to not put themselves at risk.
Will all schools follow Iowa’s model? Who knows, but I’m not sure there are a whole lot of other options out there.
Again, if an athlete is forced to compete and anything goes wrong, then the school is going to be cooked.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this becomes the standard we see across the country. It seems like the most common sense option.