Paul Batura: The fate of school football: the coronavirus pandemic: here’s why it’s more than a game

Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh asked officials to base their resolution on facts, not feelings, and to present statistics on how the school and its administration treated and contained the virus.

TRUMP SAYS THE CANCELLATION OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL SEASON WOULD BE A ‘TRAGIC MISTAKE’

“We have developed a wonderful prototype of how we can make these paintings and give players the opportunity to play. If so and follow the rules, that’s how it can be done. “

President Trump jumped into the fray, tweeting a three-word statement: “Play school football!”

Hours earlier, the country’s executive leader tweeted: “Student-athletes also worked to cancel their season. • WeWantToPlay”.

University football is a centuries-old tradition, of course, full of pomp and splendor dating back to the mid-19th century, but it is also a wonderful topicality.

Economists expect a full cancellation of the season to have a devastating and far-reaching effect of $4 billion not only on the universities themselves, but also on the countless entities that rely on the grilling engine for a living.

The cancellation of school and professional sports last spring showed that Americans can do so without a normal gambling regimen, but that doesn’t mean much.

We can without many things, but we thrive when we are completely committed and appreciate the sensations and joys that surround us, adding school football.

When I was a Catholic boy who was developing on Long Island, I don’t forget to watch Notre Dame football every Saturday with my father. He wasn’t a school student, but the Fighting Irish were his team because they were God’s team, or at least he said yes, with a wink and a smile.

The way the sun shone on his golden helmets convinced me that my father was right, and so a love story was born with the team and the school.

When I was just over twenty years old, an organization of like-minded friends and I made a kind of pilgrimage to South Bend, Indiana, to see Notre Dame take on the Navy. We all discovered it on this cool and sunny autumn day: the march of the players. , the outstanding band playing trumpet under the Golden Dome and parties around the stadium.

Just before the start, the culture dictates that a school representative parade with the American flag and then pause as the school’s award-winning band plays the national anthem.

I put on goose bumps at the beginning of the song and turned to my friend, Gary, who was on my left with his hand on my heart. He was a hardened journalist at Newsday, where we were running at the time, but with long tears. flowed down his face.

“It’s the ultimate view those eyes have seen,” he said, quoting a phrase from Rudy, a glorious film about the genuine Rudy Ruettiger, too small a child whose dream of betting football for the outstanding school came true.

College football was almost banned a century ago because the game was so violent. In 1904, 18 young people died at a festival and 159 players were seriously injured.

Critics of the game at the time had a point: the game was harmful and uncontrollable, but instead of banning the sport, President Theodore Roosevelt, a big fan of pigskin competition, summoned representatives of elementary school football powers: Harvard, Yale. and Princeton, to the White House to find a solution to the problem.

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It took several seasons and encounters, but the rules of the game were nevertheless tight and the wonderful game of football has been civilized.

Would there be a similar trace in the era of a global pandemic?For each and every problem, there is a solution.

“In life, as in a football game,” President Roosevelt wrote, “the precept to follow is: hitting the strong line; don’t make a mistake and don’t dodge, but hit the strong line!”

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Curmudgeons and snobbish sophists laugh at the game as meaningless time wasted, but they are wrong.

At its best, school football is a birthday party of so many things that America is doing well: its competition is tough, tenacious, brave and resilient. When they get hit, they have bruises and everything.

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