Ohio State’s Myers ‘not concerned’ about playing football amid pandemic

“I feel pretty strongly about this, and if the question didn’t come up, then I was going to say it at the end anyway,” the Ohio State center from Miamisburg said. “I think my level of comfort in our safety is really high. There’s nothing more our coaches and trainers and staff at Ohio State can do to keep us safe. I can’t say enough about what they’re doing, and I would say that my level of concern of safety is small. I’m not concerned.”

COVID-19 has made a major impact on life throughout Ohio and well beyond.

Though the Buckeyes came back to campus for voluntary workouts in June, they have encountered a different world with social distancing and personal hygiene as much priorities as increasing bench press reps or decreasing 40 times.

The next phase is training camp, which is set to begin Friday amid questions of whether or not it can be done without an outbreak.

While the NHL, NBA and MLS have successfully returned to play through isolating teams at one site, the planned college football season will much more strongly resembled Major League Baseball.

The Boys of Summer have been back in action for roughly two weeks, but multiple games have been postponed or canceled and two teams — the Marlins and Cardinals — have endured outbreaks.

Many college football teams, including Ohio State, have also paused their summer workouts at one time or another, and reports from New Jersey indicate Rutgers is dealing with more than 20 cases this week.

It’s enough to shake the faith of fans and spawn doomsday columns from various corners of the internet — but not Myers.

“I personally am confident that we’re going to have a season, and I really wanted to say that with restaurants being open, bars open, other places that are open where people have the freedom to do the things they want to do which really are probably minuscule in the importance of their lives, I just feel like if people our age can do those types of things, then I strongly feel like that if I want to, I should have the choice to play a college football season,” Myers said. “I feel like it’s even a safer environment being around my teammates and in the facility and staying where it’s clean and safe. I think that’s a safer environment than being anywhere else and going to restaurants and things like that, so I just wanted to voice my opinion on that. I strongly, strongly believe that. I have all the faith in the world in our coaches and trainers that they’ll keep us safe all the way through this thing.”

Coach Ryan Day credited leaders such as Myers with getting the Buckeyes to this point in the summer.

“The only way that any of this is possible is because of the tremendous leadership of our team and our upperclassmen,” Day said. “Their ability over these past months to hold each other accountable, to communicate (and) share their experiences during this time, it’s been awesome to see and really inspiring for our staff to watch, whether it was on virtual calls, whether it was in person, spread out and spaced out.”

With the threat of the virus infecting someone and running rampant through the team if anyone lets down their guard — something attributed to both MLB outbreaks — accountability could be the word of the year for college football.

“Our players and coaches, I think, have been doing an excellent job here take care of themselves and taking care of their health over the past few months,” Day said. “We’re holding each other accountable because we’re all in this thing together, and our testing policies and procedures that our medical staff, our training staff, our sports performance and administration have implemented here has allowed our players, our staff and our coaches to have the confidence to know that we’re doing everything we can to create the safest environment possible when we walk into the Woody (Hayes Athletic Center) every day.

“And the same group has worked around the clock, I mean they’ve been tirelessly working here to create the protocols and procedures for training camp that starts this week.

“The hardest part I think for this team over the past few months, certainly the last couple weeks, has been the unknowns, but I promise you our leadership has kept the team hungry and I think we’re for training right now at a championship level. Really cool to see.”