23 Clemson Football Players Test Positive For COVID-19

On Friday, Clemson announced 28 student-athletes had tested positive for COVID-19, and The Athletic's Grace Raynor is reporting 23 of them are on the football team. You read that right, 23 Clemson football players have tested positive for coronavirus, an addition to two staff members. The school has said voluntary workouts will not be shut down as a result of the outbreak.

Raynor reports more than half of the players were asymptomatic and no one has been hospitalized yet, but this is still a major development. The players who tested positive will be isolated for at least 10 days and anyone who interacted with them will also isolate for 14 days.

Clemson's number of positive cases is the new high among college football programs, surpassing Texas, which announced on Thursday that 13 players had tested positive, while 10 others had gone into isolation. The University of Houston has suspended voluntary workouts after six student-athletes tested positive and were symptomatic. Those are just a few of the on-campus outbreaks happening across the nation.

As for Clemson, South Carolina has seen cases rise over the last few weeks, so this shouldn't be all that shocking. Many states have seen an uptick in cases and spread since reopening their economies.

As I wrote yesterday, this rash of positive cases with athletes back on campuses is really just a preview of what will happen during the fall. The NCAA has to decide if it is willing to accept this kind of outbreak happening often during the college football season.