On Jan. 13, college football’s most relevant numbers were 42 and 25 — or the score of LSU’s national title game victory over Clemson.

Now, LSU’s number is at 30; that’s how many football players have gone into quarantine after either testing positive for COVID-19 or being in contact with a teammate who did.

Clemson, meanwhile, has flipped the score of this macabre game and now has 37 reported COVID-19 tests among its football players.

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Unfortunately, there may be nationwide competition — from the 14 positives in Kansas State’s program after some players attended a lake party and others played video games with friends not on the team, to the 13 positives in the Texas Longhorns’ program, to the eight at Alabama, and six at Houston, which is an American Athletic Conference member.

Last week, Memphis Athletic Director Laird Veatch told The Daily Memphian the Tigers football team still had not had any positive COVID-19 tests. The next day, the university released a statement saying three student-athletes and one staff member had tested positive, but did not reveal the names of the people or identify the sports teams involved.

Veatch, in his interview with The Daily Memphian, had called the spate of positives across the college football landscape “concerning.”

But hardly surprising.

“To expect we wouldn’t have positive tests would be naïve,” he said.

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Nonetheless, the spike in cases left college football open to second-guessing far beyond play-calls made on a Saturday afternoon.

“Some have been saying we brought out student-athletes back too soon,” AAC commissioner Mike Aresco said. “That makes no sense to me. By getting them in, we discovered they had it. They didn’t know they had it and could have been out there spreading this to their family and friends.”

It is a valid point, given how many players testing positive have been asymptomatic.

“I’m not surprised college football players are testing positive,” said Dr. Jon McCullers, an infectious diseases specialist and associate dean at UT’s College of Medicine.

McCullers also serves on the city-county COVID-19 task force and chairs a separate task force on the reopening of the University of Tennessee. He says the positive tests among college football players are a “microcosm” of the larger surge in the 18-29 demographic.

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As a group, young people have returned to socializing while taking a more relaxed approach toward distancing and mask-wearing.

Dr. Gregory Stewart, director of sports medicine at Tulane and chair of the AAC’s COVID-19 medical advisory group, says “self-policing” among college football teams will be vital to limiting outbreaks.

“I told someone the other day,” Stewart said, “our mantra for the season is, `Don’t be a knucklehead.’

“There’s a party somewhere and you know what? You’re not gonna go. If the team’s important enough to you, you don’t go.”

Two-plus months to a potential kickoff

The first game on the Memphis schedule is Sept. 5, at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium, vs. Arkansas State.

Terry Mohajir, vice chancellor for intercollegiate athletics at ASU, says when players returned to the Jonesboro campus, seven tested positive for the coronavirus.

“We expected to have some,” he said. “That’s why no one is freaked out.”

With the start of the season still almost two months away, the trends could take a turn for the better.

Or a turn for the still-worse.

“Not knowing — in a world where people are accustomed to knowing everything in advance and planning in advance – is the hardest part of this,” College Football Playoff Executive Director Bill Hancock said in a recent interview.

The most-worn cliché in college football is, “Let’s go 1-0 this week,” but to an extent that’s true in this scenario. Only, the week in which everyone is attempting to go 1-0 is all these weeks leading up to the first game.

“If we can get to the first game,” Stewart said, “we have a decent chance at playing the season.”

Story could change

That, of course, is an analysis based on today.

Veatch describes himself as “cautiously optimistic” the season will start on time. Mohajir goes so far as to say that he’s “pretty optimistic” the entire college football season will be played.

Even so, Mohajir gives COVID-19 its due respect: “It’s serious. It hasn’t been overblown. We just have to follow the science. Sometimes it’s hard to get good information because of how toxic our political environment is.”

The plan to move forward and have a college football season might prove to be a solid one, but is it not entirely built on rock because it can’t be.

And with players testing positive either having mild to moderate symptoms or appearing asymptomatic, it’s easy enough to minimize their risk.

“Young and healthy, and if they get this, they’ll be fine,” McCullers said of the prevailing attitude.

Except, he says, some won’t be.

“As a society, are we going to develop some tolerance for this in athletes?” McCullers said. “The first time some college football player is hospitalized or dies, will that change the whole narrative?”

Can’t stop, hope to contain

David Sweat, chief of epidemiology at the Shelby County Health Department, offers some local numbers that, to a degree, can inform how we might evaluate the risk of playing a college football season and putting some fans in the stands.

Shelby County data shows 76% of cases to be in people younger than 55, and 40% in the 25-44 age group.

College players are usually younger than 25, but that 25-44 group is full of assistant coaches, trainers and other staff members. In the case of the Memphis Tigers, it also includes 39-year-old head coach Ryan Silverfield. Even AD Laird Veatch is younger than many of his colleagues, at 48.

Sweat also points out that the demarcation line for coronavirus-associated difficulties is lower than often reported and would be within the age group of many college football coordinators, head coaches and athletic directors.

“Ninety percent of the deaths in Shelby County are actually 55 and older, not 65 and older,” Sweat said, adding that in almost 80% of all fatalities the patient had a cardiac problem as an underlying condition.

“So, who are the older folks (infected players or other staff members) are exposing?”

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Memphis tested players, coaches/staff on the first day of return to campus, Veatch said. Since then, they have been monitored and screened. Subsequent tests are only being done if there are symptoms and upon a physician’s recommendation.

“That may have to evolve,” Veatch said of their protocols.

The biggest risk for spread of infection, Sweat says, comes from the amount of time football teams spend in close proximity to one another. Once the ramp-up to the season gains speed, more players would be closer together in the locker room, the weight room and around the training table. Not to mention in drills and full-on practices.

“Sports teams have had outbreaks before,” he said. “When I was in college in the early 1980s, there was a measles outbreak on the campus at Baylor. And it also affected the football team.

“This is different because it’s every place at once. It’s not one team; it’s all the teams. That changes things a lot.”

From game week to game day

So, how do we get to a place where, come Sept. 5, everyone involved is comfortable with Arkansas State playing at Memphis?

How do we get to where everyone feels confident about games being played all over the country? From Notre Dame at Navy to Charlotte at Tennessee to Michigan at Washington?

Testing will be key, of course, but Sweat cautions there is evidence that people are not paying attention to light symptoms.

Thus, when the majority of college football players who test positive are labeled as “asymptomatic,” that probably isn’t always accurate based on the general contact tracing the Health Department has done.

“When we interview people,” Sweat said, “we find it’s not so much they don’t have symptoms as it is they have symptoms they describe as very mild — 'I had a runny nose for a couple of days, I had a little cough. It was no big deal -- it was just allergies, it was just a cold.’

“But in reality, they were shedding COVID.”

This complicates the effort to get to game day.

So far in the AAC, Aresco says, each school is using one or more local laboratories to handle testing. Still on the table: the league converting to a central testing laboratory.

Another uncertainty: the reliability of the tests. No test is 100% accurate.

And while an asymptomatic positive test is one thing in June, it’s another when the games start and a player who otherwise appears healthy can’t play because he keeps coming up positive.

“One team in the (Sun Belt) had a guy test positive for three straight weeks, but with no symptoms,” Mohajir said. “He’s been in isolation for three weeks.”

Right now, Aresco envisions testing for Saturday AAC games on Thursday. But if there is any doubt about getting test results back in time, it might have to be moved to Wednesday.

In theory, a small number of players testing positive would not have to mean the cancellation of a game. Such benchmarks, Aresco says, are still under discussion. But it’s also more complicated than a raw number or percentage.

A positivity rate of 10%, Stewart says, might mean one thing if the bulk of those players are redshirt freshmen unlikely to play. It’s something else if the players are mostly starters and second-string players likely to get significant game time.

In still another scenario, a team might only have three positive tests, but what if they’re the team’s top three quarterbacks?

When, who and how will decide if the AAC cancels or postpones games?

“It’s a work in progress,” Aresco said, adding that it could fall to him to make the final decision when respective school administrators are in disagreement.

If games are canceled, teams may not end up playing the same number of games and so the league is exploring potential tiebreaker procedures.

“It’d be hard to make them all up. We’re playing with 11 teams this year so we don’t have the same number of byes,” Aresco said. “We missed games a few years ago because of hurricanes but we’re able to make up all our games.”

The risk of a `COVID-gate’

In this “new normal” that is anything but, there is the potential for games within a game.

Already, some college programs are notorious for trying to hold back as much player/injury information as possible (ahem, Jim Harbaugh and Michigan), and that adds another layer of intrigue and gamesmanship.

To that end, Stewart says at the Saturday pre-game meals for conference games, an independent third party will be used to ensure no player has a temperature of 100.4 or greater. Normal operating procedure also is for medical personnel from the two schools to meet before kickoff and exchange relevant information: “Face-to-face,” Stewart said, “or now mask-to-mask.”

He says while mistrust might be a default setting in the coaching world, “The medical personnel are going to trust each other.”

The league’s medical advisory group also is taking steps to remove temptation from the process.

“A `lost’ test is a positive,” Stewart said. “They’ve created disincentives for schools and coaches to kinda play with this.”

But rest assured, some will go right up to the line — wherever that line is.

“We are not telling anyone — or how many — UNC football players test positive,” a North Carolina athletics official told cbssports.com. “We would simply say they are out right before the game starts.”

A new day, a new slogan

Should the season play on, Memphis would finish Nov. 28 at Tulane.

“That’s so far down the path right now,” Veatch said. “You get in the game and things have a way of changing.”

It is why at Tulane, Head Coach Willie Fritz is emphasizing his players religiously follow all the recommendations for health and safety.

“Our slogan now is #protectourbubble,” he said, adding: “I don’t get into any medical stuff and Doc Stewart doesn’t call any plays.”

Assuming we have games, what’s the real risk in the games?

“In a game situation, there is more of what I call a `slobber factor,’” Stewart said. “Sweat, saliva, heavy breathing.”

In the NFL, quarterback Tom Brady is taking heat for going against league advisories and holding “volunteer” workouts with his new Tampa Bay teammates. At minimum, they are breaking the 6-foot social distancing guideline and multiple players are touching the same football.

But then there’s no having a football game without that happening, is there? So, how risky is it?

“If the quarterback (has the virus) and coughs on his hand, there’s still not much viral load,” Stewart said. “And if he throws it to a wide receiver, he’d have to touch the ball in the exact same place and then immediately wipe his eyes.”

The chance of transmitting the virus in that scenario?

“Unlikely,” Stewart said.

Although Arkansas State has not yet committed to wearing face shields on their helmets for the Memphis game, Mohajir said they are purchasing 110 of them at $16 apiece ($1,760) for use in practice. Memphis is also exploring face shields for helmets.

But then there is this: It’s one thing to incur risk from your teammates – the cost of doing business, at some level – and another from opponents who might not divulge all.

Or as Gary Patterson, head coach at TCU, told cbssports.com: “We’re not going to play (anyone) if they don’t tell us about (COVID-19 positive tests). We’re not putting anybody in jeopardy on our sideline or anybody else.”

If you open the gates, they will come

All across the country, leagues and schools are wrestling with the number of fans they can safely seat in their stadiums.

Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium holds just shy of 60,000. Whether it can be used at 25% capacity or 50% capacity come Sept. 5, is one of those unknowns.

What is known: Fewer fans means less money.

“There will be a seven-figure negative impact for our athletic department,” Veatch said. “We don’t know how deep it will go.”

Another unknown: What, exactly, this and other stadiums will look like come game day. Social distancing to some extent is a given, probably at much more than 6 feet. Both Veatch and Arkansas State’s Mohajir mentioned not separating fans individually, but by account.

In other words, four family members with tickets sit together but not too near anyone else.

To be sure, there are multiple logistical hurdles to making it all work.

“You still have choke points where you’re sharing space together,” Sweat said. “Going through the turnstile, the concession stand, the bathroom.”

Some parts of a stadium may have to be cordoned off.

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“At the Liberty Bowl, they’ll have to rope off where people could stand over the players as they come out of the tunnel (behind the end zones), so you don’t have people yelling and respiratory droplets falling on players,” Stewart said.

This is also why increased social distancing in the stands will be necessary.

Sweat says the equation is pretty simple: An infectious person plus close proximity plus a long duration equals enhanced risk for transmission of the virus.

So if someone sitting behind you at a football game is screaming, you’re at more risk.

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“They’re going to be expelling virus into the air onto you,” he said. “You can maybe get by for 10 minutes, but not four hours.”

The whole-fans-at-the-stadium framework also presumes temperature-taking upon entrance and mask-wearing. Mayor Jim Strickland just signed off on a city ordinance requiring masks when in public.

“But are people gonna wear a mask at a football game?” Sweat asked. “Eating nachos and hot dogs and drinking beer?”

New world

College football is not first. The PGA Tour and NASCAR are back in action; the NBA will try to play within its Orlando “bubble” absent fans and MLB will try to cram in a 60-game regular season, sans fans.

Could all of it work?

“NASCAR has done this well,” McCullers said. “I think there’s value (to playing college football). I’m a huge sports fan. I think we want football back in some form.”

Provided the risk is not too great.

Meantime, we’ve all learned life goes on.

“We’ve been four months without live sports. I’ve kind of adapted,” McCullers said. “I’ve got Netflix and I play more video games.”

That said, everyone in college football wants to make this happen. Even as they know audibles will be the rule of the day.

“We’ll learn a lot about ourselves,” College Football Playoff Executive Director Bill Hancock said. “Probably one of the things we’ll learn is that we can function in an uncertain world.”

So, do your part, know your role, carry on.

“Shelter-in-place wasn’t to 100% get rid of the risk,” Mohajir said. “It was to flatten the curve for medical providers.”

But even if the curve is flattened, that doesn’t preclude hot spots.

“You’re going to have team outbreaks,” Sweat said. “You’re going to have individual people who have severe cases. I can’t say it’s going to happen to the Memphis Tigers or Rhodes College or the Memphis Grizzlies.

“But statistically, it’s going to happen to somebody.”

And what then?

There are about 110 players per Division I FBS team and 129 teams. That’s more than 14,000 college football players.

Statistically, some of those players are at enhanced risk whether they know it or not.

“Not to be an alarmist, but if an athlete has an underlying heart condition, it’s a possibility somebody could die,” Sweat said.

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So, again comes the question: What, as a society, are we willing to tolerate to have sports back?

“I don’t know the answer to that,” Stewart said. “We’ve had catastrophic injuries — spinal cord injuries — and it’s not stopped the game, so I don’t know.

“But if the NFL shuts down, college shuts down.”

No guarantees

“The final chapter of this book is the vaccine,” Stewart said.

A vaccine that is at least several months off, McCullers says, and even then, the tale won’t be completely told.

How effective will the vaccine be?

How long to manufacture enough doses for the whole country?

How long to distribute to everyone?

So, until then …

“It’s about being willing to make adjustments, make smart decisions, do the right thing,” Veatch said.

“We all want to start and give it a shot,” Mike Aresco, the AAC commissioner, said. “What determines whether we finish is health and safety and nothing else.

“Financial considerations won’t matter and other considerations won’t matter. Nothing is going to get in the way of health and safety.”