Charlotte coach Will Healy had COVID-19 last month. This season has brought him to tears
Any fan of Charlotte football knows that the team has been dramatically affected by COVID-19. The 49ers have postponed games so often during this weird college season that the real upset will come if and when they play again.
What those fans don’t know, however, is that Charlotte head coach Will Healy was diagnosed with COVID-19 recently.
Healy told me in a phone interview Thursday that he didn’t mind publicly sharing the news of his own positive diagnosis for the first time. His positive test result came back several weeks ago. Healy said he was asymptomatic but would have missed coaching at least one of the 49ers’ November games — he couldn’t remember which one — except for the fact that every one of those games ended up being postponed or canceled.
“I was very surprised by my positive result,” Healy said. “If we weren’t testing three times a week as a program, I never would have known.”
Healy said his wife, Emily, also likely had the coronavirus at the same time he did. Although she wasn’t tested, she temporarily lost her senses of taste and smell, Healy said. Their two young children were seemingly unaffected. The family quarantined together, with Healy continuing to work remotely. Healy is now back in the office and on the practice field, hoping the 49ers get to play Western Kentucky at noon Sunday at home (ESPN3).
That date is etched in oatmeal, not concrete, however, like the entire college football season has been everywhere. The 49ers have had a staggering series of postponements or cancellations of games this year — eight of them, so far, by Healy’s count. Healy tweeted on Saturday morning: “Game on!!! See you tomorrow Niner Nation!!” But these days, you never can quite tell until kickoff.
Already in the past week, Western Kentucky was supposed to play Charlotte Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. in a game they were billing as the “Breakfast Bowl,” only for the 49ers to have to postpone due to what Healy said was positive testing within the Charlotte program.
Five days later, the two teams plan to try again. A proposed Charlotte-FIU game Saturday was canceled in the meantime — it was originally supposed to be played Oct. 17th and had already been rescheduled once.
Whose fault are all these cancellations? Not Charlotte’s. Not their opponents. It’s COVID’s fault.
The 49ers have been taking every recommended precaution and sometimes going beyond, Healy and athletic director Mike Hill stressed. And still, Charlotte (2-3 overall, 2-1 Conference USA) hasn’t played a game since Halloween, when the 49ers got blitzed, 53-19, by Duke.
November was a complete washout for Charlotte, as Lucy jerked the football away from Charlie Brown time and time again.
Still, there is hope. The best-case scenario I see for Charlotte: Win Sunday afternoon over WKU to get to 3-1 in Conference USA. Then hope that league officials let Charlotte play undefeated Marshall on Dec. 12th, because an upset there might give the 49ers a shot at qualifying for the conference championship game via tiebreaker.
There’s a worst-case scenario, too. And I’m only talking football here, because it goes without saying that any sports event pales in comparison to the 275,000-plus lives already lost in the U.S. due to COVID.
But for the 49ers football team, the worst-case scenario is that everything gets canceled, one slow drip at a time. December turns into a carbon copy of November. The 49ers would then end up with no games after Halloween, playing among the fewest games in America at college football’s top level.
Will Healy as the Grinch
Healy’s positive diagnosis isn’t unique in his sport. The list of head college football coaches who have tested positive over the past few months continues to grow. It includes Alabama’s Nick Saban, Florida’s Dan Mullen, UCLA’s Chip Kelly and Arizona State’s Herm Edwards, among numerous others.
None of the postponements had to do with Healy’s diagnosis, the coach said. He added that the postponements so far have been an even split: Four of the postponements or cancellations in 2020 have been due to positive tests for players within the 49ers program and the other four for positive tests by the opposing team.
So on eight separate occasions, the second-year Charlotte coach has had to tell the 49ers they weren’t going to play a game they had prepared to play. Sometimes, the game was only 24-48 hours from kicking off.
“I hate it for our guys,” Healy said. “Every time I have to stand up there like the Grinch and tell them that Christmas is canceled. And every single time I hate it.”
I asked Healy if it has gotten any easier, now that he has delivered this bad news so often. He said that it hadn’t, and that like his own father, his emotions tend to bubble to the surface for all sorts of reasons.
“I still cry when I see Rudy run out onto the field,” Healy said, referring to the classic sports movie.
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Monday, when he had to tell his players the Western Kentucky game wouldn’t be played Tuesday, the coach said he broke down in tears during the announcement.
“You just hate to disappoint them,” Healy said. “All my emotions came to my head. I felt like Eli, our 6-year-old, pitching a fit.”
The game was later rescheduled for Sunday — for now. That’s assuming no more last-minute obstacles.
“From Monday to Friday, I’m the biggest fan of the other team,” Healy said. “You’re just hoping that you both can get to the race.”
The Vanderbilt rumor
Only 35, Healy is encircled by rumors once again this fall. This time it’s mostly about the open head-coaching job at Vanderbilt. Healy has deep family and coaching roots in the state of Tennessee and as a former college quarterback has an offensive mindset that athletic directors often want.
“I feel like there are two different rumors that go on in November and December,” Healy said in a press conference Tuesday, fielding a question about open jobs while laughingly noting that his boss, Mike Hill, was also on the Zoom call. “There’s a rumor you’re getting fired, or there’s a rumor that you’re leaving for somewhere else. And we are 2-3, just trying to find a way to be able to play a football game.
“And then it’s my buddies from Tennessee calling me saying, ‘What’s going on?’ I’m not sure that the rumors haven’t been created by people who dislike me in Tennessee, and they’re just trying to add more to my plate and act like this is serious. ... But thanks … I appreciate you adding a little bit of awkwardness to this press conference.”
Healy signed a contract extension in February approved by UNC Charlotte’s board of trustees that carries through Jan. 31, 2026. His annual salary was raised then to $755,000. If Healy leaves before the contract ends, he will owe a buyout of between $505,000 and $631,250, depending on what year of the contract he departs, according to previous Observer reporting.
Hill said Tuesday that he didn’t mind Healy’s name being bandied about for jobs.
“I hope every year we’re in a situation like that,” Hill said, “because when we have a head football coach who’s coveted, that means we’re having success. And Will should be coveted every single year because of what he’s done here.”
What Healy has done for the past month, though, is a lot of waiting. And some quarantining. And making some Grinch-like announcements. And some more waiting, which may well end Sunday. If it does, the Charlotte 49ers will have gone 36 days between games. But that’s 2020.
“If we ever get an opportunity to be able to play again, it better look like Club Lit on the sidelines,” Healy said. “It would be a victory in itself to be able to line up and just go play a football game again.”
This story was originally published December 3, 2020 at 3:48 PM.
