Harbaugh’s message is plain: Wear your mask

Coach urges diligence, has team leading by example

If you want college football anytime soon, wear a mask.

If you want to watch it in person, wear a mask.

If you want to sing Michigan‘s fight song while standing (somewhat) near your friends or schoolmates, wear a mask.

If you want to get up at 6 a.m., pop open a canopy, ice down a case of Natty Lite and guzzle for a few hours on a Saturday morning before stumbling to the gates of Michigan

Stadium …

… Wear. A. Mask.

Jim Harbaugh didn’t tell you to do so when he spoke to reporters Wednesday morning about the state of his team and the state of the game. But he sure implied it.

His players, he said, are masked up wherever they go. They social distance. They cook their own food. They follow intense protocols for the privilege of stepping inside Schembechler Hall.

“They want to be a force for good,” Harbaugh said, “an example when they’re here.”

In other words: If the players can wear a mask, so can you.

It’s science. Not only that, it’s common sense.

If you cough and you can slow your projectile gunk by a few feet, why not do it?

Besides, even if the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization and local public officials are wrong and masks don’t work, what have you lost by wearing one?

Nothing.

Not. One. Thing.

But if (most) medical folks are right, and mask-wearing slows the spread and helps us get COVID-19 under control, then wearing a mask might get your favorite team back on the field sooner.

Yes, there are other factors. A vaccine will likely help. That probably won’t come until next year, if we’re lucky.

And even if we all wear masks during every public encounter for the next seven weeks, we may well not get football anyway.

But it could help. All for the cost of smelling your breath for a short time while you jump out of your car and run into whatever store you want.

Harbaugh’s players are wearing masks more often than that, including on the practice field at times. That can’t be fun. But they are doing it.

“There’s protocols that have been put into place,” Harbaugh said.

How have his players followed them? “They’ve been really great about following those,” he said. “I think they really understand there’s great value to keeping their own personal health but that of their teammates.” Ah, teammates.

His players are thinking about them, not just themselves. Though, according to Harbaugh, they aren’t just thinking about their teammates, either.

Jim Harbaugh

“They’ve taken it to the extra level where they’re out in public (they) wear a mask, (they) socially distance … Everything they’re doing, they’ve been a really great example and a force for good.”

Harbaugh understands that some folks look up to his players. He’s right that their example might influence … oh, say, fellow U-M students, who don’t share his players’ strict protocols inside a tightly controlled football building but do share their youth.

And its concomitant sense of invincibility. Harbaugh used the word “cavalier” to describe the attitudes of college students. He said his players have noticed.

“I’d say the biggest question I’m really getting from our players is how they can be part of the solution,” he said.

“A lot of the feedback has been that their peers, other people in their age group, are somewhat or very cavalier about the virus. How it affects that age group.”

The U-M football team wants to help. Because it wants to play. And if you want to watch the team play, you can be part of the solution, too.

As for when a season might happen? Harbaugh expects a better answer to that in the next few weeks. He is praying there will be football this fall, assuming politicians and scientist types allow it.

On Wednesday, the Ivy League announced it won’t have sports until next year.

Obviously, the Big Ten is not the Ivy League. Harvard and Yale don’t rely on football to lure students.

U-M and Ohio State and Penn State do. Which means everyone associated with this enterprise will try every which way to field a team within the next school year.

The more you wear a mask, that easier that endeavor will be.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.