Michael Ackerman isn’t a college football fan.
The Mayo Clinic genetic cardiologist has been to two college football games in his life.
But if we have college football this fall, Dr. Ackerman will be one of the reasons why. His perspective on myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart, helped the Big 12 hold off on canceling its season, which would have set off a string of dominos that could have doomed college football last week. Without the Big 12, the ACC would have likely dropped out, and it would have been increasingly difficult for the SEC to move forward alone. The fate of the 2020 season hinged on the biggest wild card of the Power 5 conferences.
The Big 12 brought in Ackerman for its Tuesday call last week amid a Sports Illustrated report the conference was split on what to do. The Big Ten and Pac-12 had already announced their plans to cancel the fall football season, citing myocarditis as a primary factor in those decisions. Before the Tuesday call, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told the Dallas Morning News, “You’d be less than forthright if you didn’t acknowledge between the myocarditis and some of the other things that are new, it hasn’t raised the concern level.”
In two weeks, it went from a secondary issue to the topic that created considerable concern among Big 12 university leaders after multiple recent national stories detailed the risks involved. With the season hanging in the balance, myocarditis was poised to be the issue that pushed the Big 12 into the same fate as the Big Ten and Pac-12.
Enter Ackerman.
The Minnesota-based cardiologist leads the Windland Smith Rice Sudden Death Genomics Lab which studies, among other things, sudden death in young athletes. He explained to the Big 12′s leaders that a new myocarditis study in the Journal of American Medical Association that sparked panic across college sports didn’t have the “bandwidth” to be transferable in a useful way. The study, conducted in Germany and composed of middle-aged adults, found that 78 percent of the 100 participants had some cardiac abnormality. Ackerman said it’d be a “scientific foul” to infer that those findings are relevant for 18 to 24-year old athletes.
“You cannot make that leap,” Ackerman exclaimed.
He used a soup analogy to explain how to weigh myocarditis, among other COVID-19 related issues, in whether to play football this fall. The conferences that canceled their seasons, he explained, stirred myocarditis in as a primary ingredient into their soup and then declared the soup tasted bad. Ackerman advised the Big 12 and Conference USA leaders to take myocarditis out of that equation, and if they still felt like the soup tasted bad, then that was their reason to cancel.
Most importantly, though, he said they shouldn’t use myocarditis as the reason to cancel college football now.
“There’s just too many unknowns to say we have new damaging, alarming evidence that COVID-19 myocarditis is the big, bad spooky thing in town now, and we need to do something about it,” Ackerman said. “Not new news at all; we’ve known that this virus can affect the heart muscle for five months now. It’s not new, it just got put forward in a new way, and it’s taken on a new life.”
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Ackerman’s expertise proved very influential within the Big 12 ranks. Here was a qualified expert with no stakes in whether college football would be played this fall, giving the green light to not throw in the towel yet. Baylor AD Mack Rhoades told ESPN Ackerman, “provided us with a comfort level” that a player who tests positive for the coronavirus could safely return to competition after going through a cardiac screening. Big 12 leaders were intently listening with “their ears wide open” when Ackerman talked, according to a Big 12 administrator.
Not long after Ackerman briefed the group Tuesday night, the Big 12′s leaders decided to move forward with fall football plans. Bowlsby said Ackerman provided “very helpful information.”
“We are going to take the advice of our medical advisors and medical experts in this area, and certainly Dr. Ackerman has a strong knowledge base when it comes to the areas of myocarditis and cardio issues,” said Ed Stewart, the Big 12’s executive associate commissioner who oversees football and serves as liaison to its medical advisors.
UAB AD Mark Ingram, who listened to Dr. Ackerman address his conference a day later, described a similar reaction among CUSA leaders who had been increasingly worried about a potentially deadly heart issue that most knew little about until recently.
“When Dr. Ackerman spoke, it felt like this wave of relief,” Ingram said. “He had a very calming effect, a very logical voice in the room. I thought his talking points were very well-balanced and logical in where we are with the virus, with testing and protocols.”
The Mayo Clinic cardiologist didn’t sugarcoat that myocarditis can be a serious issue. The inflammation of the heart, caused by viral infections, can ultimately be deadly in rare cases. Former Boston Celtics star Reggie Lewis, who collapsed during basketball practice, died at the age of 27 from myocarditis. Brian Hainline, the NCAA’s chief medical officer, said last week he was aware of 12 athletes suffering from myocarditis after COVID-19. It remains an issue that bears close watching within college athletics going forward.
Ackerman pushed for the Big 12 to consider additional heart-related protocols to mitigate any possible risks, with the conference adopting plans to test athletes who had the coronavirus with an EKG, cardiac MRI, echocardiogram and troponin blood test. He stressed that any player who contracts COVID-19 needs to have a “squeaky clean cardiac evaluation” before getting the go-ahead to return to play. He cautioned them to consider possible mental health ramifications of canceling a season, referencing past experiences with athletes who suffered after being medically disqualified for heart issues.
Citing his own experience in dealing with non-zero risk situations with patients every day, he provided a path forward for college conferences hoping to play college football this fall.
His impassioned plea swayed the room with Bowlsby saying “the biggest argument is nobody’s told us that it’s poorly advised to go forward and do what we’re doing.” Stewart told AL.com, “We feel good about the individuals we are relying on for information, and we’ll continue to do that.”
“They were refreshed by slowing down what they thought was the heart freight train as their reason to end the season,” Ackerman said.
There will be more hurdles for conferences like the Big 12 and CUSA to overcome in the coming weeks. Fears of what will happen when non-athlete college students return to campus have already been crystallized at the University of North Carolina which moved to online-only learning after only a week. COVID-19 testing concerns and the challenges around quarantine restrictions for athletes aren’t going away. A decision to move forward one week in August doesn’t guarantee that every college football game will be played this fall.
Still, no issue frightened college leaders quite like myocarditis over the last two weeks. Pac-12 ADs and coaches were in favor of playing a fall season until a call with the conference’s medical advisors discussing the coronavirus-related heart issues made it a “no-brainer,” to cancel the fall season, a Pac-12 coach told The Athletic. The Big 12′s call could have headed a similar direction without Ackerman’s perspective. If it had, any semblance of a 2020 fall season would have been dead.
Ackerman won’t be attending games in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium or Bryant-Denny Stadium anytime soon.
But if there are any games played inside those stadiums this fall, he’ll be one of the reasons why.
John Talty is the sports editor and SEC Insider for Alabama Media Group. You can follow him on Twitter @JTalty.
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source https://betterweightloss.info/how-a-cardiologist-may-have-saved-the-college-football-season/
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