National Post (National Edition)
Big Ten's decision shatters the myth of college sports
Special plans for players reveals a caste system
Here is how important college football is in the United States: By Tuesday afternoon, the University of Wisconsin had 2,160 students who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, and all classes were being held virtually. On Wednesday, Barry Alvarez, the school's athletic director, said: “Our athletes will be able to start practice immediately.”
Here's how important college football is in the Big Ten: At Michigan State, local authorities ordered that students in 30 large residences must quarantine for two weeks because coronavirus cases were dramatically spiking at the school. The county health officer said in a statement: “There is an outbreak centred on Michigan State University, and it is quickly becoming a crisis. The surge in cases we have seen over the past few weeks is alarming.” The Spartans will open their football season Oct. 23 or 24.
The coronavirus pandemic has completely laid bare the contemptible nature of college athletics. The Big Ten's decision to reverse course and try to stage a football season made it as crisp and clear as a Saturday afternoon in the fall: Athletic departments do not exist to afford opportunities to compete for thousands of “student-athletes.” Rather, they exist to stage college football seasons. The other stuff is just pretty banners and shiny trophies.
Oh, and this: There is a line now on Big Ten campuses dividing students who play varsity sports and those who don't.
Think about the disparity here. The conference, at its expense, will provide coronavirus tests every single day to a junior economics major if he happens to play football and a sophomore sociology major who excels at soccer and not to the kids who sit alongside them in class.
That's a caste system. The scholarship football player finds out whether he is healthy every day. The out-of-state future chemist paying US$45,000 a year to attend virtual classes from her dorm room has no such confidence.
Whatever the inequities, the news that the Big Ten is returning was hailed in Columbus
and Ann Arbor, College Park and State College. “It really is a blessing to be here today,” Kevin Warren, the conference's commissioner, said in celebration. Six weeks ago, university presidents voted 11-3 not to hold a fall sports season. Warren later said the decision would not be revisited. President Trump called to lobby. Players complained. Parents rallied — and even sued. On Tuesday, those same presidents voted 14-0 in favour.
Given the about-face, as Wisconsin chancellor Rebecca Blank told a U.S. Senate committee just Tuesday: “Your first question should be: What changed?”
So, then, that's our first question.
“It wasn't about political pressure,” said Morton Schapiro, the president of Northwestern University. “It wasn't about money. It wasn't about lawsuits. It wasn't about doing what everybody else was doing. It was the unanimous opinion of our medical experts.”
Listening to a virtual news conference Wednesday — in which Schapiro and Warren were joined by three Big Ten athletic directors as well as James Borchers, the head physician for the Ohio State football team and co-director of the conference's return-to-play medical subcommittee — you got the distinct feeling this could work. That's not saying will or should work. But could.
“We're very likely to reduce infectiousness inside practice and game populations” to almost zero, Borchers said. But Borchers' assessment — and the subsequent agreement of the 14 school presidents and chancellors — speaks only to the populations of athletes on these campuses. So what's most important to protect is being protected: the athletes.
Put simply, physics majors don't generate money for their schools. Quarterbacks do. But more than that: The schools that make up the Big Ten are institutions of higher learning. The Big Ten itself is a massive business that stages athletic competitions and creates content for its media partners. The objectives of those two entities don't always align.
According to Sports Business Journal, the Big Ten's six-year broadcast deal with ESPN and Fox is worth $2.64 billion (yes, that's with a “B”). With no football games, this year's cut of that money doesn't exist.
College football is advertised as being part of the greater university community, integrated seamlessly. The pandemic reinforces it's not.