North Carolina coach Mack Brown walks three miles a day, examines the best foods to add to his diet, and tries out various masks for comfort and safety to further isolate himself from COVID-19, a task of greater importance after the Tar Heels placed voluntary gaps on hiatus after a wave of positive tests.

“As the leader of this program, it is my responsibility to take care of myself,” said Brown. “Because they don’t have to make me sick.”

With his wife at a higher risk of complications from COVID-19, Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson will spend the season outside of his family. So does Penn State coach James Franklin, whose daughter has sickle cell anemia.

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Since the spring, most Bowl Subdivision coaches have posted videos or statements online, highlighting the importance of wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic. These calls have taken on a new urgency in the past two weeks, as programs and coaches link steps such as mask wear to the fate of the coming season.

“I want to make sure the staff is okay,” said Jeff Hafley, a Boston College coach. “If they go to their family, I want to make sure their family is okay. I want to set the standard for doing everything we think we can do to stay healthy. ”

Coronavirus carries a significant risk to older head trainers, who continue to lead a significant portion of the 130 team FBS. Eighteen head trainers are over the age of 60, led by 75-year-old Ohio coach Frank Solich, the FBS’s oldest coach. In total, 38 head trainers are aged 55 or over.

“I’m in that experienced age group they’re talking about,” said Brown, 68. “I’m one of those who go way beyond what would be a risk trying to make sure I’m safe.”

Eight out of ten deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. are, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in adults age 65 or older. The two highest risk scenarios for older adults, per CDC, are medium or large face-to-face meetings where it can be difficult to keep social distance.

“I think it is a very worrying area,” said Dr. Jon McCullers, senior dean for clinical affairs at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Medicine. “We see the complication rate and the death rate rise steeply from the age of 55 and then every decade thereafter ever higher. So the older the coach, the more likely they are to have serious consequences if given COVID. ”

The season itself remains questionable. Two of the Power Five leagues, the Big Ten and Pac-12, already announced plans to play conference schedules only. Several programs, including Ohio State, have suspended workouts amid an uncomfortable increase in positive tests for the coronavirus. On Thursday, the NCAA issued practice and competition guidelines that emphasized how the national wave may impact practice and competition in confirmed cases of COVID-19.

And for FBS head coaches, the optimism resumed in June by team activities was colored by a persistent dilemma.

How do these coaches ensure their own health and safety while performing the daily task of orchestrating over 100 players, assistant coaches and support staff?

“We’ve had those discussions,” said San Diego State Coach Brady Hoke. “It is clear that we are concerned that we remain healthy and that we keep everyone healthy.”

Under the procedures established by the NCAA, many programs have been able to conduct compulsory team activities for eight hours a week, including film study and strength training. Starting this week, teams can spend up to 20 hours a week on mandatory activities. (The Big Ten and Pac-12 have said that all activities will remain voluntary.)

Since early June, the lack of mandatory training and the ability to hold team-wide and positional meetings have made it practically possible for coaches to keep physical distance within football facilities – and face-to-face meetings have been pushed into larger spaces, with programs being moved to staff meetings that typically held in small conference rooms in auditoriums built to hold entire grids.

“We said from the beginning that we really wanted to be proactive and make sure our boys were doing what we needed,” said SMU coach Sonny Dykes. “It starts with me and is passed on to our coaches and then to our players.”

For coaches over 55, the standard risk of transfer is exacerbated by the daily interactions with athletes who do not live in a purified bubble such as NBA players, and who could continue to participate in training while asymptomatic to COVID-19.

Two other factors may increase the likelihood of the virus entering dressing rooms and football facilities later this summer. One is the inability of the US to contain the current peak in positive cases, as the number of daily cases has more than doubled since the end of June. And keeping players coronavirus-free can become even more difficult on campuses where entire student organizations return to campuses.

“I’ve read enough where when I wear my mask and when I am around people who wear their masks, and when I keep my social distance and when I clean my hands, which I do about 30, 40 times a day, and if we keep the surfaces around us clean, then chances are we will get the virus, ‘said Brown.

At the very least, creating a safe environment would require coaches to wear masks and permanently engage in social distance – at the most drastic end of the spectrum, McCullers said, some coaches might avoid the sidelines during matches to avoid them in the immediate vicinity of players. Maintaining that distance for the rest of July and August would run counter to the typically hands-on climate of preseason preparations.

“I think you can offer a lot of protection to coaches. I think they will do some of that in terms of masking and trying to keep some social distance,” McCullers said. “But these are students, and they will get the disease because they won’t be in a bubble like the NBA is doing now. There will be a disease there. “