UND football coach Bubba Schweigert on team vaccination rate: 'We've got to do better'
Jul. 27—Although there was once hope the COVID-19 pandemic wouldn't have much influence on the 2021 FCS fall college football season, talk of the virus and vaccination rates dominated the Missouri Valley Football Conference preseason Media Day conference call Tuesday morning.
League commissioner Patty Viverito said teams should be targeting an 85 percent vaccination rate, as it may become the NCAA benchmark for teams to no longer need to test and trace for the coronavirus.
As of the conference call, though, Viverito said no teams in the MVFC have reached that mark.
UND football coach Bubba Schweigert said he doesn't have specific data available yet, but that his program needs to improve its vaccination rate.
"We've got to do better," he said. "We need to. I don't have the exact numbers yet, but we're working on that. We need to educate our team and do better — that we know. We look to get that number improved very shortly here because we need to.
"I think we'll have a good educational session here. I think this will change for us. Families and individuals will have to work through this a bit. We're trying to get accurate data with our sports medicine staff and see who's really going through it. We've had some guys that have gone in recently and gotten (vaccinated) so we expect our numbers to increase here and they need to."
Schweigert said his coaching staff's vaccination rate may be 100 percent.
Viverito said the league doesn't plan to reschedule games for COVID-19 issues, as it did in the spring. In the spring, UND had games canceled against Missouri State and Youngstown State in the regular season. A game against Illinois State was canceled after Illinois State opted out of the season midway through the schedule.
"Sadly, team vaccination rates are lagging and the Delta variant is raging," Viverito said. "We are far from out of the pandemic woods. We remain hopeful that we will have guidance that determines that if 85 percent of a team is vaccinated, that will preclude the need to test or contact trace asymptomatic individuals. That would certainly make all of our lives a lot easier."
Viverito said when the league met with conference coaches in June, the rates "were frightening."
"When we met just a couple of weeks ago, the numbers were vastly improved, and we had some real success stories about some tactics that made a lot of sense," Viverito said.
A wide spectrum of vaccination progress was indicated throughout the conference call as each coach discussed their status.
South Dakota State coach John Stiegelmeier said his program has the lowest percentage of players vaccinated in the league but didn't indicate a specific percentage.
North Dakota State coach Matt Entz also didn't divulge vaccination data but said "five or six" more players received their first shots over the weekend.
Missouri State coach Bobby Petrino said his team vaccination rate is 84.6 percent although that includes some players still awaiting a second of two vaccination shots.
Southern Illinois coach Nick Hill said his team rate is in the mid-to-high 70's. He believes his team will reach the 85 percent threshold. Western Illinois coach Jared Elliott was also confident his team will soon hit 85 percent.
Youngstown State coach Doug Phillips said his team is close to 70 percent.
UND football's fall camp will begin the first week of August in preparation for the season opener Sept. 4, in Pocatello, Idaho, against Idaho State.
