When it came time to deal with a global pandemic, we knew school football would smell like tackle.
This fragile collection of largely autonomous fiefdoms, each basically involved through the accumulation of wealth and power, will never make the right choice against a formidable opponent like coronavirus.
Not this sport, which has been content to raise billions of dollars at the expense of unpaid workers, poisoning our higher education formula by turning campuses into unpaid professional franchises.
Officials followed their same usual game plan in the face of a potentially fatal roulette game.
They make the money.
“We’re enjoying herbs to see what’s going on,” said Cyrus Shahpar, director of the epidemic prevention team at Resolve to Save Lives, an organization that works with countries around the world to address the disease epidemic. .
“There’s going to be a lot of school athletes with COVID-19 infections,” Shahpar said, “and we don’t know that it’s going to affect the long run. “
But without a singles frame and a set of regulations for everyone, school football continues as a sloppy Petri plaque amid a pandemic that has already claimed the lives of nearly 200,000 Americans.
A summary of the low lights:
– The Big Ten, backing in its first admirable resolve not to play football this fall, now announces that it will launch a rushed eight-game season on October 24. The Southeast Conference and other leagues that had not followed suit.
Speaking of COVID-19 as if it were nothing more than an sniff, coach Ed Orgeron, of the current national champion LSU, casually stated that much of his list had already been affected by a virus that may have long-term fitness ramifications that we “Most of our players hit him,” Orgeron said. “I think, hopefully, once you catch him, you won’t have it anymore. “Then, as if giving himself a credible denial, he added, “I’m not a doctor. “
– Georgia Southern went ahead with its first season match opposed to Campbell even though 33 players – THREE!- they weren’t going to play. The school did not reveal how many of these players, adding seven headlines, decided after being beaten or exposed to COVID-19.
– This lack of transparency was perfectly in line with the country’s schools, which treated positive checks as state secrets. Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley said he would not focus the effects of his team’s COVID-19 check during the season because it puts the Sooners at a “competitive disadvantage. “, “appearing precisely where your priorities are. Many of his colleagues have taken a similar approach.
The coronavirus has already forced several games to be postponed just weeks after the start of the season, which is not a promising sign for schools facing a limited window of potential recovery dates and fears of the flu starting. The season will lead to a “twindemic”, which makes it even more difficult to keep players healthy.
Austin Peay probably wanted me to cancel his first game. None of the team’s 3 long snappers were about to play, so a supporter tried to get the job done. He missed some shots and the governors lost on a last-minute scoreboard.
The Big Ten, the first of the Power Five meetings to postpone the season at least after the first of the year The league expected the rest of their brothers to stay to their liking, but with each convention loose to do their own thing, only the Pac-12 came here to pass.
Looking with envy that the SoutheastErn Conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big 12 continued with the plans of the season, the Big Ten faced the negative reactions of players, coaches and parents. More worryingly, the league knew it might take years to get out of their finances. recruitment efforts.
It’s a diagnosis the league couldn’t accept.
So let’s go!
“We’re in a better position, no matter how we got here or how painful the time we waited to get to that moment,” Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith said after Wednesday’s decision. “Everything was left behind, beautiful, It is that we have put in place a procedure and protocols based on science and based on the classes learned since August 11, “when the league first voted not to play in autumn”.
One way or another, just 36 days later, Big Ten has discovered a miracle cure for all its worries, surely wrapped in dollar signs.
“At the end of the day, we’re going to play football,” Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez said cheerfully.
In unrelated news, Penn State’s Big Ten school announced that the total number of COVID-19 cases on its campus had increased to 1,146.
Although the Big Ten resolution is accompanied by strict evaluation guidelines, this does not apply to the rest of the student body, and therein lies the madness of the school football game, a pandemic, on campuses full of academics who do not play football and who do not. have coaches, coaches and teammates watching each and every one of their moves.
“Even with schools that have had disordersArray . . . I haven’t heard anything positive in sports facilities or sports,” said Georgia Tech sports director Todd Stansbury, whose team will play their game at the moment Saturday as opposed to Central Florida. “The difficulty is outside the doors of our so-called controlled bubble. “
These disorders should improve.
But school football has had its appeal.
The bad, as usual.
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Paul Newberry is a sports columnist for the Associated Press. Write to pnewberry (at) ap. org or www. twitter. com/pnewberry1963. His paintings may be in https://apnews. com/search/paulnewberry
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