Gene Taylor thought he was playing it safe when he allowed preseason football practices at Kansas State University to start on June 15. It was two weeks later than some other teams had started practicing—a significant setback in the hyper-competitive Big 12 conference. Every athlete was quarantined for at least a week after they arrived, then tested for the virus. Those who tested negative underwent daily temperature checks and questioning before they could work out. For the first week, it looked like the team had pulled off the impossible: Not one player tested positive.
But a few players showed up late, either because they were freshmen or transfer students, and weren’t tested until the Friday before. The athletics department told them to isolate themselves until the following Monday, when they would get their results back. But college students are college students, and two of them didn’t listen. One player went to a birthday party over the weekend; another went to play video games in an apartment with eight to 10 other people.
“That's when it started to spread,” Taylor told The Daily Beast in an interview this week.“We had two more, and then we had six, and then we had eight.”
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