RALEIGH, N.C. — Even by the long and tortured standards of N.C. State, this was a ridiculously cruel and unusual turn of events, a potential national championship only three wins away only to be eliminated by the dying throes of a pandemic.
Many, many questions remain about the exact circumstances. A 2:10 a.m. press release from the NCAA declared Saturday's rematch against Vanderbilt a "no contest" but offered no details and no clarification why it was OK for N.C. State to play Friday and not Saturday. But there's no getting around that, in the end, this was a self-inflicted wound.
There's more nuance and uncertainty to who was and wasn't allowed to play Friday or would have been Saturday, but it all comes back to this: Under NCAA protocols, vaccinated individuals are exempt from COVID-19 testing and quarantine protocols.
So if more N.C. State players were vaccinated, more would be available to play. If they all were, the Wolfpack would almost certainly still be playing. And might even have won, with a full roster available, Friday night.
And if this outbreak indeed started with an unvaccinated player and spread to vaccinated players who then tested positive, as has been reported, then it's even simpler than that. The unvaccinated players were a ticking bomb all along, an open door to disaster.
N.C. State coach Elliott Avent didn't help matters with some of his comments Friday evening that suggested he didn't recommend to his players that they get the shot — "I don't try to indoctrinate my kids with my values or my opinions" — but he was clearly shaken by a set of circumstances he clearly wasn't prepared to handle, and not everything he said made sense. Referring questions about "politics" to the team doctor made none.
It's fair to let that dust settle before assessing Avent's role in all this, although at first glance it certainly doesn't reflect well on him. Other college coaches were certainly watching this closely, the not-so-smart ones at least. The smart ones would already have ensured, if not demanded, their players were vaccinated long ago. College coaches are no strangers to imposing their will on their rosters in every other respect.
The NFL at large figured this out a while ago, if not Sam Darnold: getting your whole team vaccinated is a competitive advantage. In any pro or NCAA sport, getting vaccinated not only restores quality of life, but also buys your way out of most, if not all, protocols if there is a positive test.
Yes, not getting vaccinated against COVID-19 may be a personal choice, but it unquestionably affects others, and you may face discrete and significant consequences for that choice.
N.C. State found that out the hard way. It cost the team a shot at a national title.
Which doesn't, in any way, excuse the NCAA from blame.
There's a bit of this that's like reaching in for the ball in basketball or getting a stick on someone's hands in hockey. Yes, you may be able to do it legally, but you're also giving a clueless referee the opportunity to call a penalty they might not have called otherwise.
N.C. State might have had more outs here, but it gave the NCAA an opportunity to indulge in its worst bureaucratic, impersonal self, and did it ever.
The substance and the style of how this was handled certainly doesn't help. An organization that cares about "student-athletes" wouldn't have done this in the middle of the night and it would have found a way to offer more clarity about why this was necessary rather than treating it like a mishandled instant-replay review of a foul ball.
The NCAA acted with the same callousness when it booted Virginia Commonwealth from the NCAA men's basketball tournament after the Rams arrived in Indianapolis, showing no public or private sympathy at all for their plight.
There are health-privacy laws to be followed, but there's also common decency and common sense to apply. It didn't have to be like this.
That's true of the NCAA and N.C. State alike.
