These athletes, some experts say, are essentially canaries in a very contagious coal mine.

“I think [these outbreaks] tell us more about what may happen when we get thousands of students back on campus than just what’s happening on athletic teams,” said Zachary O. Binney, an epidemiologist at the Oxford College of Emory University.

“In a group that is interacting a lot with one another, this virus spreads quietly,” he added. “We’ve seen this happen on college campuses with summer sports workouts, and I think there is reason to believe that we may see something similar in the fall.”…

At the same time, colleges are bleeding money due to the pandemic. For larger institutions, a canceled or even reduced sports season could be a significant blow to their bottom line. According to the U.S. Department of Education, colleges made $14.8 billion off of athletics in 2018, the last year for which data is available. Texas A&M, one of the top-earning schools, made $192.6 million from its teams in 2013 alone. (Head football coach Jimbo Fisher recently praised Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to reopen stadiums, telling a local radio station he thought the school’s season would be “pretty close to normal.”)