Rutgers preps for Ohio State -- and Ebola -- before trip to Columbus
Ohio State University's football stadium is about a two-hour drive from Summit County, Ohio, where a woman infected with Ebola spent a long weekend after taking a flight into Cleveland.
But Rutgers head coach Kyle Flood is educating his team about Ebola as they head to Columbus (central, not northeast, Ohio) to take on the Buckeyes Saturday.
A story on nj.com details Flood's self-education about the disease and his own passing along of that information to his players after Thursday's practice.
"What I did is, I went online and did some of my own research just to see how it spreads and to educate the team, so we did a little bit of that this morning," Flood said.
Good first step.
"I assured them that the plane, when we get on it, will be sanitized and cleaned. From all the information I have, it's transferable through bodily fluids. It's not something you can get just by standing next to somebody. "
OK, maybe Flood's not in line to be the undersecretary to the "Ebola Czar," but he's got the right idea.
"You gotta be careful. You gotta make sure your hands are clean, can't share drinks. We'll take all the necessary precautions. But it's not something that will distract us, either," Flood concluded.
The team won't be taking a commercial plane but instead a chartered flight to Columbus Friday.
No one in Ohio has been diagnosed with Ebola though a number have been quarantined after coming into contact with Amber Vinson, the nurse who visited family in Tallmadge, Ohio and began to show symptoms of Ebola during her trip. Vinson took two commercial flights, one from to Dallas to Cleveland and another from Cleveland to Dallas on Frontier Airlines.
Rutgers isn't alone in preparing for Ebola. The New York Giants have done just the same as they head to Dallas to take on the Cowboys this weekend.
When it comes to mysterious, deadly diseases, precaution is probably a wise move (even if the threat is currently centered in a different part of the state in the case of Ohio).
Ohio State is a three-touchdown favorite over Rutgers but, as Flood said, he won't let his team be distracted by Ebola, so no excuses should the Scarlet Knight get trounced.
