ACC Championship is on in Charlotte despite COVID spike. Health director wonders why.

Nobody asked Gibbie Harris, the Mecklenburg County Public Health Director, about the wisdom of bringing the ACC football championship game to Charlotte and Bank of America Stadium during a worsening pandemic. If she had been asked, she said during a phone interview earlier this week, she would have advised that the game be held somewhere else.

“I had no role in those discussions,” she said, adding she’d have preferred to have a say.

The ACC Championship Game on Saturday between Clemson and Notre Dame has generated considerable hype in the college football world. It’s a match-up of two top-five teams, for one, and a game that could go a long way toward shaping the College Football Playoff. It’s a rematch of what was a compelling and memorable regular-season game, which Notre Dame won in double-overtime.

Then there’s the novelty of Notre Dame in a conference championship given its long-standing football independence, which is only in hiatus because the coronavirus pandemic forced it into a temporary arrangement with the ACC. To Harris, though, the game brings about different kinds of thoughts:

Why does it have to be in Charlotte? And how might the thousands of fans coming into town for the game affect the transmission of COVID-19, which is surging in Mecklenburg County as it is throughout much of North Carolina?

At the start of the college football season, in mid-September, confirmed coronavirus cases in Mecklenburg County were growing by about 110 per day. Over the past two weeks, they’ve increased there by an average of about 600 per day. Since the start of the month, 35 people have reportedly died from the virus in Mecklenburg County.

The ACC Championship Game is the first of two larger college football events that Charlotte is hosting this month. There’s also the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, set for Dec. 30. While several bowl games — including the Quick Lane, Pinstripe and Sun Bowl, to name a few — have decided to cancel because of the pandemic, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl is proceeding.

“Would I prefer that they not be held?” Harris asked, referring to the ACC championship and the bowl game that follows. “Yes, I would prefer not, because there are fans coming in from other parts of the country that are not part of our community. And I think right now is not the best time for that to happen.

“But unfortunately, the governor has decided that these types of activities can continue to happen as part of the executive order. So that’s sort of where we stand right now. I think as we move into the next couple of weeks and the holiday season, we’ll need to think critically about the bowl game that’s coming, and see what happens there.”

The ACC title game and its coronavirus protocols

The ACC Championship Game is following the same protocols the Carolina Panthers have used, and those protocols outline everything from testing teams and support personnel to the sanitation of the stadium. In addition, the in-person attendance Saturday at Bank of America Stadium will be limited to the same number that has been allowed to attend Panthers games in recent weeks: 5,240 — 7% of capacity.

Harris praised the way the Panthers have handled the pandemic, and “how spread out” spectators have been since they’ve been allowed to attend games in limited numbers. That the ACC will use the same seating chart, she said, “gives me a little bit of comfort.”

“But again,” Harris said, “I think most of the fans that have been here for a Panthers’ game have probably been fairly local. I don’t know that we’ve seen a lot of people traveling in for those games. So that’s what concerns me more about these two games, is the fact that it’s not local people coming in to see these games.

“We’re looking at folks from other states.”

Could the Notre Dame-Clemson game have been held elsewhere?

The limited number of tickets for the ACC championship has undoubtedly increased demand, which in turn has established a premium pricing market. On StubHub, the cheapest ticket for Clemson-Notre Dame was still going for more than $900 on Wednesday night. The most expensive ticket was more than $2,000.

Charlotte has become the all-but-permanent host of the ACC championship. The game has been played at Bank of America Stadium in nine of the past 10 seasons — the only exception coming in 2016, when the conference moved it to Orlando, Fla., in protest of North Carolina’s controversial HB2 law, parts of which were later repealed.

Asked whether the ACC considered holding its championship game at a school site, and on the campus of either Clemson or Notre Dame, a league spokesperson responded with a statement that referenced the lengthy contractual agreement the ACC has to hold the game in Charlotte.

“The ACC has long enjoyed our partnership with Charlotte, including a contract to annually host the ACC Football Championship Game through 2030,” the statement read. “We have worked for months with the Carolina Panthers to mirror their gameday protocols, which has served everyone well. Since the beginning of the pandemic, our league — inclusive of the ACC Medical Advisory Group, our schools and teams — has adhered to all local and state guidelines, and will continue to do so.”

Coronavirus in Mecklenburg County

Harris, meanwhile, said, “I’m not really not sure why the decision was made to move forward with a game like this, in that stadium.” She has seen the coronavirus case numbers rise around Mecklenburg County and, like a lot of public health officials, she’s worried.

At the start of the month, almost 44,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in Mecklenburg County. A little more than two weeks later, the number was up to 53,076. It took more than three months for the county to hit its 10,000th confirmed case. Now Mecklenburg had nearly arrived at that milestone in two weeks.

And soon, Harris knew, thousands of people would be coming into town for college football.

“And I know — everybody’s wanting to get back to normal,” she said. “Everybody’s wanting to do the things that we’ve always done in the past. Unfortunately, 2020 has not been a normal year. And we are not in a position to do things the way we’ve always done them in the past.”

And so from a public health perspective she wondered, she said, about “these organized sports that we’re continuing with while we’re in the throes of this major pandemic right now.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2020 at 8:00 AM.