I love football at school, I enjoyed it when I was developing in Ohio, right on the Michigan border, we went to the University of Michigan games on Saturday afternoons in the fall, and then to the University of Toledo games at night. Dad called them.
In college, I never missed a house game in Northwestern, I probably deserve to have had it because we almost lost them all. These days, NU earns a lot, so not only do I return to campus for a game or two every season, however, I’ve been to 10 of the Wildcats’ last 11 bowling games.
College has also been the cornerstone of my journalistic career, from my early days covering the University of Florida and the University of Miami to writing a dozen national championships.
I tell you this as a prelude to what happened over Labor Day weekend: I turned on one of the school football games on TV, watched some games, and then turned it off. The next day, I did the same thing. I turned it on, turned it off.
Like I said, I love school football, but I can’t see it, not this year.
In what will be the riskiest spin of the cube in the history of school sports, 76 universities, many in the south and southwest, are embarking on the ultimate reckless action ever perpetuated on college campuses in the call of athletics. playing football in the middle of a pandemic.
These schools go to ridiculous extremes, writhing in pretzels, hiding the effects of COVID-19 tests and tweaking the initial lines with which they are not quarantined, to justify the unjustifiable: allowing student-athletes to practice a game that is the antithesis of social estification on entire coronavirus campuses.
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The university presidents of those schools, adding up to the entire CCA, sec and Big 12, are making the biggest bet of their careers: that their resolve to play football this fall does kill people.
Right now they don’t know if it will be like this or not, open those stadiums, play those games and who knows what will happen, they can take all the precautions of the world, but then a user gets hooked because the school president authorizes a game to play ends up transmitting the virus to another prostitute who takes it home to his wife or gives it to a neighbor , gets sick and dies, or an employee at this stadium infects another employee who wouldn’t be there if the school had postponed fall sports.
In the future, we know the tragic scenarios. Some laugh at them, saying that fans want their football and that schools (and school cities) want the money. They end up right. We’ll find out soon enough.
But for now, what we do know is that the dozens of schools that play football have no idea if, by allowing fall sports, they will lead to illness, hospitalization and even death in their campuses and communities. Trigger. They just guess and wait.
Many other schools have that don’t need to cross their hands and hold their breath. The Ivy League has called for the postponement of autumn sports in July; Big Ten, Pac-12, MAC and others followed in August.
The worst thing to say about these schools is that they were too suspicious of the physical condition of their student-athletes.
What is the worst that can be said about schools that have allowed football and other sports to continue?That’ll be here in a few months.
Since I was little, September has been a birthday party, foreshadowing the return of our country’s greatest sporting passion, school football, this year this comeback brings nothing yet of disbelief, there can be no birthday party of the irresponsibility of other people who deserve to know much better.