Meet college football players’ health concerns

Another week brings another momentous coronavirus decision. Should the college football season be canceled?

It’s not quite as important as whether to reopen businesses or schools. Those are essential parts of a functioning society.

College football isn’t. Just don’t tell that to millions of fans in Florida and across the U.S.

They are nervously hoping schools like UCF, Florida and Florida State don’t follow the path taken Tuesday by the Big Ten and Pac-12, both of which announced they would delay the season until spring.

The Southeastern, Atlantic Coast and American Athletic conferences are expected to announce their plans in the next few days.

As with other reopening debates, there is no good answer. Every option has major downsides. We’ll leave it up to individual leagues to decide what they think is best.

But as they wrestle with that, there is one easy call. Players across the country have come up with lists of demands that would enhance their safety and benefits. Conferences and schools should agree to those demands, even though it would upend the college sports model.

That model has largely been built on treating players like indentured servants. No doubt, serfdom has its privileges, like free tuition, meals, stipends, tutoring and mass adulation.

But as revenues have skyrocketed in major football programs, players have sought a greater voice at the table. They deserve one, if for no other reason than they are the show. ABC would not pay the SEC $300 million a year to televise fraternity flag football games.

Hazard pay is one item in a 10-point “Proposal for Change” document that originated at UCF and circulated to other AAC schools two weeks ago. Players also want 20% of total league revenue, split evenly among athletes in all sports.

If that made AAC brass spit out their morning coffee, imagine how Pac-12 officials felt when they got the memo from players demanding 50% of league revenue.

Settling the financial issues will take a lot of time and negotiation. But many of the other player demands can be addressed right away.

Chief among them is the ability to opt out the season. If a player does not feel comfortable with the safety setup, he could sit out and his scholarship would not be threatened.

That’s important because UCF and most schools outside the major Power Five conferences don’t guarantee scholarships for four years. They renew them annually. We’d like to think no school would pull a scholarship because someone opted out, but players are more than justified in seeking that guarantee.

Players also want a medical redshirt year if they contract COVID-19 and miss at least half their games. They want medical coverage for injuries and Covid-related health issues for at least five years after their last season.

When it comes to sports reopening in the pandemic, the track record is spotty. The NBA and NHL have done well in “bubbles,” where all teams quarantine in one or two cities. MLB has canceled games due to COVID-19 outbreaks.

Professional athletes are adults going to work; college players are ostensibly just students participating in an amateur extracurricular activity. That’s how the NCAA has justified a business model that pays players diddly while paying coaches extravagantly.

If safety and health demands are met, players almost uniformly say they want to play this fall. University presidents and administrators are weighing all that against the obvious pandemic risks. It’s a tough position, though ensuring the welfare of players should not even be an issue.

If college football can’t manage that, there shouldn’t be a season.

The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, Fla.)