If a football player sneezes on an airplane, do his teammates lock him in the lavatory for the rest of the flight as a precaution?
With concerns of swine flu and other illnesses spreading through athletic teams, such a far-fetched scenario almost seems like it would have a bit of truth to it.
Athletes, particularly at the collegiate level, are around one another probably more than any other existing social or working environment.
They eat together, they travel together, they often study together and even room together, such as this weekend when the Utes visit Colorado State in Fort Collins.
"I don't know when we aren't around each other," linebacker Stevenson Sylvester said.
With such close contact, the concern of spreading germs among athletes is legitimate, said Paul Silvestri, Utah's head football trainer.
However, while certain strains of sickness might be morphing into new problems such as the H1N1 virus, the Utes aren't going to be making any drastic changes in terms of precautions.
"You do your best to try and teach the guys healthy habits, like not sharing drinks or food or towels," Silvestri said. "We disinfect everything in the training room, even door handles and the water bottles they use at practice."
Even with the precautions, the spread of nasty bugs can't always be prevented.
Florida, Washington State, Tulane and Ole Miss are just a few of the teams who have had numerous players affected. Silvestri, who worked at Kentucky before he was hired by Utah this season, said he has been in touch with several trainers affected by the flu and learned they were taking many of the same precautions the Utes have.
"You do your best, but when you have 120 guys, it's impossible to keep everyone from getting sick," Silvestri said. "When they're on campus, they are in contact with thousands of other students. We have hand sanitizers all over our building and we instruct them to use those, but there is only so much you can do."
Then there are those moments of competition, when cleanliness is never a priority.
"You've got body fluids, sweat, spit, no telling what is going on in there," Silvestri said. "Fortunately, most guys wear gloves now and that helps."
So far, no illness has run rampant among the Utes. In hopes of keeping everyone healthy, the Utes all received flu shots last week.
They're still waiting to find out if shots for the H1N1 virus could be an option after those with higher priority receive the shots.
In the meantime, if an athlete gets sick -- say, the guy on the plane with the sneezing fit -- the Utes won't go to an extreme and don hazmat suits, but will quarantine him. While the Utes might not be able to afford to put ill players on separate planes, as Florida has done, a sick player would get his own room (if the Utes are on the road) and some good alone time to spend with those sniffles.
"If you know a guy is sick and contagious, we'll stay away," Sylvester said. "We'll probably pick on them a little bit, too."
Such heightened awareness didn't always exist.
Silvestri could remember that before Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) started appearing in the 1990s, prevention wasn't as detailed as it is now.
"In a training room sense, we've always kept the areas as clean as possible because we are a health care facility," he said. "But for coaches, when they started losing players for weeks at a time, everyone ramped up their education more. People were constantly reminding guys to wash their hands and things like that."
Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said he is always concerned about a bug running rampant among his players but said he felt the team was taking enough precautions.
"You try to be as sensible as you can," he said.
Like many other new strains of illnesses, swine flu is concerning for many because little is known about it. Patterns have shown the virus strikes the young at higher rates than other populations. An encouraging sign is many recover quickly from the illness.
"It's a different type and we still don't know how people are going to react to it," Silvestri said. "We're just going to keep pounding it into the guys to take precautions and take every measure we can to prevent it."
