POLLING PLACE
There certainly are those who believe college football simply won’t — and perhaps shouldn’t — happen in 2020. Meanwhile, the sport marches on — ill-fated or not — toward the start of what’s scheduled to be a slightly shortened regular season.
Across the country, training camps opened, or at least were scheduled to open, this week. At Illinois, it was announced by the school that 18 football players had tested positive for COVID-19 since reporting to campus. But Illinois also intends to test players daily, which is more than most schools can say.
At Illinois and everywhere else, some level of debate exists: Is enough being done to protect students? For this week’s “Polling Place” — your weekly home for Chicago Sun-Times sports polls on Twitter — we focused that question on football.
Broadly speaking, can football coaches and administrators be trusted to do all they can to keep players safe?
“They want to keep the players safe, but that’s secondary to bringing in the [millions of] dollars that keep the athletic departments afloat and pay the coaches’ salaries,” @howardmoore611 commented.
That’s a “no” vote — there was a landslide of those — and a fairly cynical one at that.
On a lighter note, we asked about watching fan-free hockey on TV. The Blackhawks are making it pretty entertaining with a qualifying-round knockout of the Oilers.
“I really don’t watch hockey for the crowd,” @PeterGaeta was helpful enough to point out.
Fair enough. We also asked about Cubs closer (OK, ex-closer) Craig Kimbrel, whose future in that role is a big, fat question mark.
“Four-run lead, minimum,” @TBGOfficial_ wrote. “At this point, he just needs to get through an inning.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? On to the polls: