Cut our losses
As the pandemic continues, there can’t be college sports in 2020
Thedominoes are falling, thankfully. The false façade is crumbling. This goofy charade might be coming to an end.
There can’t be college sports in 2020. And with great momentum now, an athletics world that has had people running around in 100 mph circles for four months in an effort to preserve something untenable is coming to grips with the futile and unnecessary nature of this pursuit.
It’s not yet official, a total wipeout of fall competition, but perhaps inevitable. One shutdown, cancellation and/or postponement at a time, we’re working back toward reality and priority.
Current reality: We’re no better off, nationally, with the COVID-19 pandemic than we were in March.
Utmost priority: Preservation of safety and lives — not sports — and minimizing spread.
I wrote the following on Sunday and I’ll repeat it today: We can’t get back to any semblance of a normal sports world until and unless there is a vaccine, and the most optimistic target date for that is early 2021.
To all those who have people running in circles, those dragging their feet toward pulling the plug on any 2020 aspirations: Just stop. Accept that it doesn’t make sense — in ways of health, logistics and even sanity — to hold any competition until January, at the very earliest.
Still, the engines roar. Because $ $ $. There are spikes across the country. Yet those in the Power Five infrastructure are so beholden to TV contracts and dependent upon the billions of dollars disseminated from a college football season and NCAA Tournament that they want to dance with disregard for the people in harm’s way and a national effort.
Meanwhile, bozos here and there were reluctant to, or refused to, wear masks or socially distance, facilitating the virus’ spread, and those same bozos demand the return of college sports because they’re, what, bored?
Anyway, let’s say only football and men’s basketball can be preserved. Isn’t that essentially a claim that it’s not safe to play soccer or field hockey, but safe to play the most lucrative sports? How disingenuous.
I’d go this far: Maybe forget winter, too. Move back football and basketball. Let March Madness become, I don’t know, the June Jamboree. Whatever. Just stop everything, indefinitely, recalibrate, regain perspective, alleviate pressure, take a deep breath and — how about this? — let some people take a vacation before moving onto whether spring even makes sense.
We’re at a time of ultimate campus chaos, even with so few actually on campus. From athletic directors to coaches to student-athletes to support staff members and beyond, the past four months have been a merry-go-round of insanity, working around the clock on something unworkable, people hellbent on establishing models that would allow for fall sports to begin as scheduled.
Can every college or university president and every conference commissioner please
realize enough is enough and put an end to this process?
Some are at least beginning to get a (loose) grip. The Ivy League canceled sports through 2020, the NESCAC did the same and some Power Five conferences have announced some forms of scaling back, all the start of disintegration to a system that can’t stand.
“The Ivy League has taken a principled stand that it’s going to put the well-being and health of athletes first,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal told The Courant. “[No] matter how much a school is a football powerhouse, no matter how big the revenues involved, athletes should be put first.”
Good point. Incomplete point.
What about everyone else? Head coaches? Assistants? Referees? Trainers? Academic advisors? The entire student body and staff?
We keep asking whether there will be college football in the fall. We should answer by saying, no, there certainly should not be.
Still, so many in college sports are still being made to run around, putting plans in place in a way to express to those above and below them that, hey, if we actually do this, this is what it’s going to look like. And then that plan changes. And then another Zoom meeting. Most everyone I’ve chatted with in recent months — numerous in the college sports world who know more than I do, though none in the Power Five — tend to follow up with some version of this underthe-breath sentiment in regards to sports in the fall.
Ain’t no chance.
No kidding!
We shouldn’t even assign dates to the days of 2020 anymore. July 11 was the same as March 11. Today is 2020, tomorrow is 2020, and 2020 is a wash. Turn the page. How much time, how many resources and how much stress should continually be poured into this farcical pursuit?
I hear about planning and, sure, coaches are willing to get creative and resourceful and do anything they can to make, say, football possible. Then I hear about plans to limit practices to maybe 10 players at a time and, well, can a coach even run a play? No.
I hear about advancements in masks that would cover players to the neck. How absurd. They’d have to be air-tight to the point of suffocation. Don’t we realize that one human has to tackle another — we’ve lost sight of a student-athletes humanity, by the way — and that football is 100-plus people traveling and 5-10 people piled atop one another at every game whistle?
Meanwhile, some national headlines … Nytimes.com: “U.S. Nears 60,000 New Cases a Day”
Latimes.com: “Should you send your child back to school? Parents are stressed and divided”
Cbsnews.com: “U.S. reports 63,200 new coronavirus cases, another daily record”
UConn, which on Friday announced 150 COVID-19 tests with zero positive results, plans to return students to campus in midAugust and have them quarantine until classes begin a couple weeks later, then keep them around through part of November and have them finish the semester from home. So, stuff the students into dorms with an established acknowledgment that it’s not safe for them return after Thanksgiving break?
What are we doing?
There’s a lot to lose without sports, but an ability to choke the virus to any extent can’t be in the mix. Money lost means operations lost and jobs lost. Economies will be affected. There will be furloughs and layoffs in the athletic world, on many campuses. Maybe even sportswriters lose jobs in the absence of competition.
Wait a moment … Game on!
No. See how selfish that sounds?
Why are we putting so much effort into mitigating risk when we can virtually eliminate risk? Why, after seeing the premature reopening of so many states exacerbate the COVID-19 problem, are we pushing for an early return to college sports that could do the same?