Ann Killion: Pac12 reportedly set to bow to inevitable, postpone football.
Vote by Pac12 to delay season until spring may come Tuesday
The announcement might come Tuesday. The Pac12 college football season will not be happening. Not in the autumn of this pandemic year.
It seems obvious. Inevitable. The Big Ten reportedly already has made the decision, though not yet official, and according to reports, the Pac12 will follow suit. The process could take longer, but it seems unavoidable that other Power 5 conferences — the ACC, Big 12 and SEC — also will decide to push the season into the spring. To kick the can down the road.
That hasn’t happened yet. The Power 5 conferences have been hemming, hawing, stalling, waiting and indulging in magical thinking as the coronavirus rages around the country. As the new hot demographic for positive cases has become young men. While there is no end in sight and the opening day for college football should be right around the corner.
(The Mountain West Conference, of which San Jose State is a member, announced Monday it has postponed its football season and all fall sports. The Mountain West is one of the “Group of 5” conferences that plays in the FBS, but has a lower profile than the Power 5 confer
ences.)
College football is a multibilliondollar business. It triggers a lot of emotions. More than any other sport in America, it is rife with hypocrisy.
And, as the coronavirus has done in every place it touches, it has exposed that hypocrisy for all to see.
College football players are called “studentathletes,” but they aren’t being treated with the same regard as other students when it comes to options for being on campus.
These players have no union, no protections, and when some of them have banded together to voice concerns about their health and welfare during a pandemic, they have been called disloyal, selfish and soft. Their voices have been discounted.
But, wait! When other players have expressed their desire to figure out a way to play, putting together the hashtag #WeWantToPlay, they are brave, strong, independent. Even President Trump got behind the cause of those who want to play football.
Oh, the sad irony of that presidential tweet: With a quick, effective national response to the coronavirus six months ago, there might have been college football this fall. Instead, one more empty cry to get back to normalcy that the virus refuses to heed.
College athletes’ voices are heard when it fits one’s own narrative. Otherwise, their voices and views are dismissed.
According to a New York Times report, Pac12 Commissioner Larry Scott belittled a group of players in a meeting last week, criticizing their threat to opt out as “a misguided P.R. stunt.” A group of #WeAreUnited athletes is pushing for testing protocols and clarity on decisions regarding opting out, among other issues. A group of more than 1,000 Big Ten football players posted a similar letter.
“Leaders” like Scott are in a panic. There’s a lot of money at stake. Money made on the backs of unpaid college athletes who have no way of protecting themselves. The system as we know it could collapse. The upending of college sports is already happening, and fiefdoms are about to fall.
The #WeWantToPlay movement is led by Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence, who is almost certain to be the NFL’s top draft pick next year. Of course he and others want to play. College football players always want to play, which is why the system has been so successful at marginalizing them, suppressing their rights, downplaying health concerns.
But the #WeWantToPlay group also is demanding strict protocols and calling for the formation of a college players’ association.
The adults in charge, the same ones who wax poetic about “studentathletes” and the building of character, about collective sacrifice and taking one for the team, have done next to nothing in the past five months to address the severity and reality of the situation.
College football’s “leaders” still have no answers about eligibility issues in a lost season, or the repercussions of trying to cram two seasons into one calendar year, or retaining scholarships if one opts out, or a comprehensive testing program. They haven’t seriously attempted to set up some type of bubble environment, which seems to be the only thing that actually is working in the pandemic.
If college football is postponed or canceled this fall, it won’t be out of altruism or concern about public health, it will be because universities and programs will be concerned about liability and about the players’ newfound empowerment. As well they should be.
Since college football’s house of cards started to teeter over the weekend, there has been pushback. Head coach Jim Harbaugh, in his typical bluster, posted a statement that Michigan “will not cower” from the virus and made his case, saying his program has had zero positive tests during the past eight weeks. What he didn’t mention was that the 30,000 undergraduates usually on campus haven’t been there during all that testing success.
Nebraska head coach Scott Frost echoed the usfirst sentiment, saying, “Our university is committed to playing no matter what, no matter what that looks like.”
So maybe Michigan and Nebraska can play each other every week? American individualism?
Many of us who write about sports view it as a microcosm of society. And the coronavirus is no different. We wouldn’t do the hard work as a collective. We all wanted to be individuals, do our own thing, flaunt the protocols, refuse to put in strong national guidelines.
But the cliches about football as a collective sacrifice are actually true. It is not an individual endeavor. Michigan can’t just go and play on its own. Our inability to work together as a team in the early stages of the pandemic means we can’t have something as massive as college football now.
So, the can of college football will get kicked down the road. Beyond the bend to a spot we can’t yet see, where there might be normalcy. But only if we put in some serious teamwork.