It would be reckless not to punt season
It’s fourth and long. To do anything else other than punt at this point is irresponsible.
It’s time to give up on playing college football this fall.
I felt pain using my 10 fingers to strike the keys that formed that sentence. I don’t like every sport, but I love college football, warts and all. I’m a child of the South and need not elaborate. That said, the Ivy League was right, several other lower level college divisions are right. Saturday, the Mid-American Conference pulled the plug and was correct in doing so. The Big Ten halted prep for even its conference-only season, the concerns about COVID-19’s impact on athletes that large.
And yes, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s call on no fall contact sports for the state’s public universities is correct. Her message on that point gets muddled, of course, by her obvious blind spot whereas a certain local soccer team is concerned. “Shout out to United!” she said Thursday during her press conference. Meanwhile, the team is going from one out-of-state virus hot spot to another, staying in hotels there, etc., and bringing whatever back to New Mexico. We can only hope that “whatever” is nothing but good memories.
That’s soccer. This is football, revenueproducing college football, where it seems we are asking what price is worth what risk to players and those around them.
They get it and are coming together to strengthen their voices, raising concerns that this can be done safely. We have the “WeAreUnited” group in the Pac-12, #BigTenUnited, and now #MWUnited that includes at least two New Mexico players, though if ESPN.com is correct and there are 300 sympathizers among league players, I suspect many more of them are Lobos.
Meanwhile, those poor New Mexico State Aggies. They have no league to call home and no one to bond with in that way. #IndependentUnited
seems like the oxymoron of all time.
Remember several months ago when we thought the big issue with coalescing student-athletes would be capitalizing on the potential marketing prowess of their names, images and likenesses (NIL)?
Now they are getting together because they want to stay alive. Much less Curt Flood, much more Norma Rae.
What we really need now is time. That’s also hard to type, because I thought we’d be in a much better place in August. We can’t get the numbers going in the right direction because we don’t pull in the same direction.
When it’s fourth-and-long, yeah, maybe the Hail Mary works. But more likely, best to consult the data and act accordingly. Punt, in other words.
There are massive economic implications both to playing and not playing. And to implement and maintain COVID testing for football (and what about other programs and the additional, obvious Title IX implications)?
So instead of canceling, what about postponing college football instead in the spring, in a utopia where and when, presumably, we’ve all been vaccinated?
Why not a schedule then largely replicating what would be this fall?
Maybe then, UNM and NMSU still can play their payday games that have been canceled for this fall, and thus save their athletic budgets. By then, Los Angeles (Aggies at UCLA, Lobos at USC) might return to pre-apocalypse smog levels, (Aggies at) Florida will be steamy, and Mississippi (Lobos at Miss. State) will be … Mississippi. But green is green, and better for the Aggies and Lobos to get paid than all the money going to lawyers looking at game contracts for loopholes.
Related: Hopefully, this forever ends the snark of screaming heads on big media complaining about a Lobos-Notre Dame pairing. These games are essential to this sport’s circle of life. Be quieter and quit revealing your ignorance.
Football players will be around and, certainly, available then. They’re used to doing spring practice, after all. Games for them would be more fun. Imagine a UNM home game with the typical 40 mph spring gusts. Get a punt up in that jet stream and it might go 150 yards.
Could college players do 10 games in the spring and return for 12 in the fall? Sounds like a lot, 22 in maybe nine months. And yet the teams that reach the Super Bowl play 19 or 20 in just over five.
Would TV be on board? By then, yes. Would fans? However many are eager to see the return of Danny Gonzales — and yes, Rocky Long — on the UNM sideline will be much more so.
And by then, the players’ hearts will be in it, and fans could feel good about pretending again that the games matter.
One of the keys to happiness, I’ve been told, is always having something to look forward to.
I don’t know if I can wait that long for college football. But I don’t know that I should have a choice.