INDIANAPOLIS – Big Tens commissioner Kevin Warren hasn’t helped himself since his convention postponed the 2020 school football season, but if you need to read this story to protect Warren, avoid reading now. It’s a defensive as Rutgers plays defensively, and Rutgers allowed 37 problems consistent with last season’s game. Rutgers doesn’t play defensively.
I’m sorry, Rutgers, but it’s your fault. And it’s your fault, Michigan. And the state of Ohio, Nebraska and Penn State, especially you, Penn State. What’s happening here, the national demolition of the Big Ten after its resolution to cancel the 2020 season, is the fault of all 14 schools. Specifically, its presidents, who on August 11 took Kevin Warren to a well-lit level to announce the resolution, and then rushed out the back door.
Everyone boos and throws tomatoes at Warren, as if all this – canceling the season and letting this action speak for itself – is his fault. And that’s not the case.
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THE FUTUR: Why school football players whose groups canceled the fall season would possibly not be sent home
It’s your fault, Penn State President Eric J. Barron. Here’s why: its sporting director, Sandy Barbour, told the media last week: “I don’t know if there’s a vote or not. No one ever told me there was one.”
Well, why is that, Sandy? Don’t you have Eric J.’s number? Don’t you have yours? Don’t let me print them here. Suffice it to say, Sandy, the last 4 digits of your phone number are 7611. It says here that your schedule is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Try your call then.
Or maybe, Eric J., since your district attorney says he has no concept of the decisions that are made about the egg hen in his department, you can call it. The last 4 digits of Sandy’s number are 1086. I hope you have the code.
Meanwhile, other people across the country are just having dinner on that. Can you, Penn State’s AD doesn’t even know if they voted!
Well, no. I can’t. It’s pretty embarrassing for her to say it. A little embarrassing that someone is.
But that’s where we are today, is it rarely? People pronounce stupidity on a microphone, and if that stupidity is consistent with our worldview, we’re in it.
“The flu kills more people than the coronavirus.”
Remember when other people used to say that? And others believed it and withdrew it, as if they were repeating genuine words and not parrot droppings.
“We’re doing a wonderful task with (the coronavirus), and it’s happening to pass.”
Remember when our president said that? No, probably not. It’s March 10th. More than five months ago and 172,000 Americans died. But when President Trump said it, other people enjoyed it. And they believed it. And here, five months later, they’re angry, against me, for putting it back together! Because #fakenews and “liberal” and #hashtag and all that.
We want to pay less attention to the nonsense and think more. You think Kevin Warren canceled the Big Ten football season on his own?
If you’re in Array, contact the other people who made the decision. If you can locate them.
The cancellation of the 2020 Big Ten football season will bring the convention more than $1 billion to the convention. The projected profit loss is between $50 million and $100 million for the school.
Only presidents can do such a thing, adding their president, Sandy Barbour, yet it is Kevin Warren’s job, as the face of the conference, to announce it. He did so on August 11, thinking his presidents would support him, but now he knows better. The league’s presidents quietly as Warren is blamed for it all, adding Big Ten’s handling of this bomb ad.
Which is ridiculous.
When Warren announced the resolution on August 11, he declared the fatal risk of myocarditis for young athletes. A factor said it. He discussed “the number of instances that are increasing, the number of deaths, not only in our country (but) in our states where many of our schools are located.” A factor said it. He said long-term uncertainty is a factor.
Wasn’t that enough? We are in the midst of the worst pandemic of our lives, a pandemic that will eventually be the worst pandemic in history. But we needed Kevin Warren to explain precisely why the Big Ten canceled the football season.
Here.
Coronavirus.
The opposing momentum to Kevin Warren is impressive, with the players’ parents around the convention writing angry letters and Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields launching a petition that has attracted more than 280,000 signatures, representing more than one signature for every American killed by coronavirus. Don’t inspire me with 280, 000 signatures.
But the players’ parents are buying plane tickets to Chicago to face Warren on Friday morning. On Twitter, Ohio State coach Ryan Day continues to recruit the school’s best students, I mean he’s defending his players, saying he needs to play this season and the hashtag #FIGHT.
I wonder if some of the parents who move on to Chicapass take the Ohio State coach seriously.
Meanwhile, the president of Minnesota said last week that there might not have been a vote among the presidents of the Big Ten. In fact, he suggested, there is no vote.
“We didn’t vote according to it,” Gabel said.
Some tips: When other people start speaking Latin, run. They’re mistaken, a word to lie.
Look, Kevin Warren hasn’t done much to impress me, starting with that terrible trophy wall he wears when conducting television interviews. Behind him are Kevin Warren’s diplomas and framed stories about Kevin Warren and kevin Warren’s awards, and that’s unseemly. You’re the commissioner of the Big Ten. That’s all you want to impress anyone: your title.
A few years ago, I was telling a story about NBA legend Paul Westphal, who lived near a golf course. Malibu, I think that was the case. I asked him how he played there and he said it was too expensive. “And,” he says, “I don’t have a connection.”
You’re Paul Westphal, I’m Paul Westphal. You’re the connection!
Anyway, this is my biggest challenge with Kevin Warren in this total process. It’s not that your league canceled the season or that it didn’t give enough reason. For me, what the league has done, and why it did, doesn’t want an explanation beyond c-o-r-o-n-a-v-i-r-u-s.
Now, why is the SEC, Big 12, and ACC still rushing into American football when nearly every other league and school department game postpones their season? These 3 leagues of Power are the ones I want to realize, I guess the spelling is quite simple.
$ – $ – $ – $.
Finally, let me leave you a thought. I’m looking this way, okay? The main argument, argument number 1, for playing football at school is as follows: coronavirus is rarely fatal to students. And it’s true. Myocarditis undermines this argument, but yes, it’s true.
But that’s not the problem.
The other day, on a radio screen in southern Indiana, I literally shouted those words:
That’s not the point!
It wasn’t my most productive moment, however, the deliberate ignorance of some, the impressive vacancy through other people’s words like I woke up and worried, it’s so daunting.
The challenge is a pandemic that is whipping our country. The COVID-19 is still furious nearly six months after the outbreak began, and the more ignition wood we throw at it, the more it burns. Nearly a hundred football players exchanging air debris on school campuses across the country? It’s a fire The same goes for thousands of young people who attend the same categories and parties, as unC, Notre Dame and the state of Michigan have discovered.
Why, on Big Ten campuses, is it too harmful to football but not too harmful to classes? It’s a consultation for the presidents of the Big Ten, but lucky to track them down. They went through the back door last week. No one has noticed or heard them to the fullest since. (Mitch Daniels de Purdue is, as always, a remarkable and ordinary exception).
But there’s still time to fly to Chicago and intimidate Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren if that makes you feel better. It’s a stupid idea, but we don’t stand out intellectually in those days. Silly, people. These days, it’s the American approach itself.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.