For decades, Big Ten has perceived itself as another type of sporting convention, a convention that proudly promotes the educational achievements and values of the Great Lakes of its world-renowned and related studies institutes. ; It’s not the Big 12, it’s bigger than that, and he was content to tell you more.
As proof, just take a look at the cautious resolution adopted during the convention in August to end autumn sports amid a global pandemic. Diez. Es a difficult, heartbreaking and expensive resolution, but it’s the right one.
This is the Big Ten for you, related to science, medicine and safety. Let the SEC, Big 12 and ACC (Clemson Playing Field) football plants continue to play; The Big Ten did what it took to take care of their student-athletes, treating them almost without all the students, and that’s all that mattered.
Then came here on Wednesday, the darkest day in the history of the ten great sports, the day the much-cackling convention relented. He got scared. He’s become the SEC.
Just as the Big Ten seemed smarter during the day COVID-19 outbreaks erupted in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Maryland, while other football meetings announced flourishing postponements and COVID-like instances, league presidents backed off and ran their schools and football systems directly into the teeth of what are expected to be some of the worst days of the pandemic in October and November.
And as they do with a mountain of daily antigen tests, special delivery only for Big Ten football groups. Quick tests for football players, but not for seniors in Ann Arbor, Columbus or Evanston, or for schoolchildren and teachers in Bloomington or New Brunswick or Minneapolis, or for academics who pay for their studies amid outbreaks in East Lansing or Madison or College Park.
So how will it work? Silky smooth, I’m sure. Let’s take a look at the state of Michigan. The other day, all MSU academics were invited to quarantine – and 30 giant houses, adding 23 fraternities and women’s sorority, were quarantined mandatory – after the announced 342. new cases of coronavirus.
“This is an urgent situation,” said Linda S. Vail, Ingham County health officer. The exponential expansion of COVID-19 instances will have to be stopped. “
Hey, State of Michigan, let’s start football!Here’s LSU head coach Ed Orgeron’s COVID strategy on Tuesday: “They’re not all our players, but most of our players have understood that. I hope they don’t reach it, and I hope they might not be out of the games. »
Who would have any idea that when Nebraska and the state of Ohio and some of the other squeakiest wheels in the league began to complain about the lack of football, the presidents of the Big Ten would bend instead of dealing with them?
Or, simply, we can call him the Big Ten, just two weeks ago, Trump, desperate to win votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, told the convention to play football. Originally, the league stood firm. Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway aptly called it “cheap politics. “But don’t you know? School presidents ended up doing the same thing, giving Trump exactly what he wanted.
I would never have expected Big Ten presidents to be so precarious, so fearful, so frightened through their own shadow. I grew up in Big Ten Country, a suburb of Toledo, Ohio, in a circle of family members who spent Saturdays in the fall at Michigan games. I went to Northwestern University, where I earned college and master’s degrees. I am still very concerned about NU to this day; In addition to being a practice teacher at Medill School of Journalism, I am a member of Northwestern’s 64-person board of directors. I played no role in votes or decisions made through UN related to the practice of pandemic gambling.
While much of the blame for the terrible change of direction lies with the university presidents who chose cash and football rather than explaining why and prudence, the new Commissioner of the Big Ten, Kevin Warren, has also contributed greatly to this public relations nightmare. The poor guy made fun of some noisy football coaches, for God’s sake. No matter how he explains it, it’s transparent that he and the league have changed so that the state of Ohio can see a national name and the league can still make a lot of cash from 18 to 22 years ago in the middle of a pandemic.
As we move into October and November, in what experts say are our worst days as COVID combines with the flu, stop-and-go meetings looking to play now tell us that there will likely be postponements and yet probability, cancellations of the ten great games. .
Some groups may have a full season, others may have to prevent after one or two games, or they will miss games in the middle. Let’s hope no one is in poor health or transmit COVID to others. We’ll see. This is the prospective chaos the Big Ten chose when he sold his soul for a few football games.