No, the Big Ten doesn’t hate anyone’s children. Nor is it governed by hypochondriacs or fools who cower at the first sign of adversity.
This does not appear to be anything worth declaring after the Big Ten postponed the football season due to COVID-19. But given some of the feelings expressed through the parents who showed up Friday morning for an outdoor demonstration at convention offices, this is said to be the case.
We’re in the middle of a pandemic that has already claimed the lives of more than 170,000 Americans. The concept that other young people get COVID-19 has been eliminated. There is growing evidence that those who have had the disease, even in its benign maximum form, would likely suffer central damage in the long term, adding myocarditis.
This is a hypothesis, ice. In the Big Ten alone, at least 10 players have already been diagnosed with myocarditis, and Georgia State Quarterback Mikele Colasurdo announced Thursday that he will play this season due to illness, which can cause center attacks, beatings and even death.
“The cardiologist was pretty convinced it was a lighter case,” Colasurdo told The Athletic. “A lot of this will be just a precautionary measure because they don’t know what’s going to happen in the long run.”
Let those words, from a freshman who is also healthy as an elite athlete, penetrate for a minute.
“They don’t know what’s going to happen in the long run.”
Given the threat of this uncertainty, the question is not what the Big Ten are doing to delay the football season, but what do parents think about the protest over the decision? And do they express the emotions of their children, who are legal adults at this point and can speak for themselves, along the way, or is it what enthusiastic parents shout at youth league referees and criticize the coaches of the recreational team? Are they the big kids?
Parents are convinced that the Great Ten did a terrible job in communicating their reasoning and the medical data that influenced him. However, this point was raised, over and over, and Commissioner Kevin Warren addressed those considerations in an open letter on Wednesday.
The biggest challenge turns out to be that the parents who showed up for the occasion – I use that word vaguely because there were more members of the media than members of the family circle – don’t really perceive the gravity of COVID-19 and its imaginable implications. for their children.
Or, if they do, well, you have to make sacrifices because, you know, football.
“You can’t tell us that the Big Ten can’t do it (but) that the CCA can do it. That the SEC can recover,” said Andrea Tate, mother of the Buckeyes’ corner, Sevyn Banks. “The Big Ten can do the same.
“As we stand up and fight, we want the Big Ten to fight.”
There are many tactics to describe what is happening now within the ACC, but it is not one of them. North Carolina and the state of North Carolina continued virtual learning this week after outbreaks on their campuses, and the Tar Heels suspended football practice. Syracuse players stopped education two weeks ago due to considerations of coVID-19 testing.
Notre Dame, a quasi-member of the CCA this season, was forced to close its campus after a large increase in COVID cases. The front page headline of The Observer on Friday, the student newspaper, “Don’t force us to write obituaries.”
Meanwhile, the SEC country is home to six of the 10 states that have reported the highest number of cases in the past seven days, according to the Centers for Disease Control. With the return of academics to many campuses, it’s probably only a matter of time before the SEC also faces devastating epidemics.
Julie Wagoner, mother of Iowa defensive lineman John Wagoner, said the Big Ten deserves to be driven by numbers in their own states, than by national data. But the Midwest is also a disaster, with Illinois and Ohio in the 10 most sensible of the seven-day figures, and Indiana and Wisconsin are left behind.
“We are all evidently aware that the last five or six months have been horrible,” Wagoner said, through a video for Outkick the Coverage. “We also had to pay attention to sad stories and tragedies every day, and I think each and every one wants a little football in our lives and they’re looking to make things work.”
No, we want a guilty and coordinated national effort to take COVID-19. Then, and only then, can we have school football.
Look, I sense that parents suffer for their children and they would do anything for them. But his anger is misdirected. The Big Ten have not let their children down. He’s looking at them.
The Big Ten says the fitness and protection of 20-year-old teens and young people are more vital right now than football. This deserves to be a matter of compliment on the part of the parents, not for protest.
Follow USA TODAY sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.