The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
UConn cancels 2020 football season because of pandemic
Well played, UConn. Well played.
Although the team has reported no positive tests since its arrival on campus a month ago, UConn becomes the first FBS program to cancel its season because of COVID-19. This puts UConn in the enviable position of appearing especially sensitive to advice from the health community and particularly caring of its student-athletes.
Coach Randy Edsall, an old-school, control-freak, who has reinvented himself as a latter-day Samuel Gompers/Cesar Chavez, stands to put himself in an equally enviable position. Edsall, who began stumping nationally for college football players to get paid two years ago, last year essentially called the NCAA’s designation of student-athlete disingenuous and outmoded.
“It ain't a student anymore,” Edsall said. “It's just athlete.”
This past weekend Edsall again paved the way for his progressive stance when he made the rounds talking about how he was going to make sure the No. 1 stakeholders — the players — had
their say in potentially calling off the season. In the heat of a threatened boycott by the Pac-12 players and now a list of demands from Big Ten players, Edsall went so far as to compare himself to a union rep.
I love it. Love it. Love it. Do I believe it? Eh, kinda, kinda not.
Still, that stuff sounds impressive. When you’re the captain of a ship that is 6-30 the past three years, 3-30 against Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) teams, you’re not in a conference, you don’t have a schedule, your season starts in a month, you’re 61, more than financially set, and this is the last swing at a head college job, well, what’s there to lose?
Going independent already puts him in a position as a maverick.
So why not play the hand all the way?
I’m certainly not calling Edsall or UConn disingenuous in calling off the season. I’m not calling Edsall altruistic, either.
I would call it UConn confirming an obvious decision. Football is too much of a public health risk to play this fall. Maybe, maybe, if the NFL or Power Five throw enough money at it, they can come up with something to squeak through. Not the rest of the sport.
Edsall laid it on pretty thick at times during a video-conference call Wednesday, hours after he and the school already had received some national and local praise for not only doing the right thing, but for being proactive and standing up for the athletes. I almost expected Randy to endorse Bernie Sanders for NCAA president.
“Having been in this for 45 years, it’s always been for me about the student-athlete,” Edsall said. “You don’t want to bring up old wounds, but in my career we had a situation here where we lost a player (Jasper Howard) to an act of senseless violence. Some of those things stick with you. Knowing you’re their teacher, their coach, their mentor, you become their parent away from home.”
Edsall said he and his player leadership council met with Dr. Deena Casiero, trainer Bob Howard, and Benedict on Friday.
“They didn’t think the risk was worth the reward in terms of playing,” Edsall said. “We heard them loud and clear and support them 100 percent. The players, David Benedict, Dr. Casiero, the Board of Trustees, the president (Thomas Katsouleas), all of us were in lockstep.
“The guys who had the biggest say were the players. That’s the way it should be. I see and hear people say because we’re independent we’re able to do this. If I was head coach in a Power Five or Group of Five conference, I’d be saying the same thing, doing the same thing. Because these young men’s lives are more important than money, more important than money.”
By this time, Edsall had grown emotional and his voice had broken. You bring up Jasper Howard and start fighting back to tears, only a schmuck would call you disingenuous. There are plenty of those who played for Edsall who don’t care for him, but there also is a legion of former players from the previous decade who swear by him, swear by his loyalty and caring. Still, there’s a payoff in this and Edsall knows it. Going independent, as iffy and problematic as it is, has already brought UConn’s recruiting up a tick or two. Recruits can overlook the weaklings on the schedule if Clemson, Michigan, Ohio State or Tennessee are there. And by making sure to get out in front and keep up his profile as a progressive voice for student-athletes, there’s certainly room to cash in on that in recruiting.
So, well played, Randy. UConn had two definite games on their schedule: UMass and Army. Benedict said one of the possibilities was playing them twice. Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, Maine all gone. North Carolina and Virginia, essentially gone. That left San Jose State, Liberty, Middle Tennessee, Old Dominion all in hot spot states. One school would have to quarantine for several days after such a game.
“Could some of that change?” Benedict said. “Possibly, we’re seeing schools come on and come off on a fairly regular basis, which is hard to plan for.”
He talked to other independents and conferences. Still, Benedict said he could have put together a full schedule if needed. The Sun Belt and — gulp — the American Athletic Conference are playing eight conference games and are allowing up to four non-conference games.
“I can’t tell you how many phone calls, texts and emails I’ve got about scheduling games,” Benedict said. “Potentially home-and-home with UMass and Army … ultimately, that’s not the kind of schedule we or our student athletes wanted to play.”
UConn lost $13.3 million on football last year. Benedict said it’s hard to answer with certainty right now, there’s contracts with opponents, contracts for Rentschler Field. Yet with no games. UConn, even with 85 scholarships and coaching payroll, could lose less money by not playing. Remember this isn’t the Power Five with teams getting $30 million, $40 million, $55 million in media payouts. The Power Five is doing everything it can to preserve its TV money. Everything. UConn has more room and less money to be safer. That’s why FBS, D2 and D3 schools aren’t playing this fall.
“We didn’t make the decision on the finances,” Benedict said.
A final decision on UConn’s Big East fall sports also hasn’t been made.
Although the NCAA hasn’t made a definitive statement about eligibility on fall sports, it would be an outrage if they denied football players who opted out, or programs that opted out an extra year of eligibility.
Red-shirting couldn’t do anything but help UConn. Of course, this would add more numbers on a shortterm basis to that already outrageously high 85 full scholarship players.
Offensive lineman Ryan Van Demark read a statement of unanimous support from the players. Edsall, Benedict, the players, they all focused more on the problems with preparation rather than fear of COVID-19 in their remarks.
Even without a positive test, he said, the players saw teammates out for days. Edsall said three were isolated, 19 quarantined for an average of 10 days. They weren’t in their locker room yet. They’re lifting in groups of only 16. They’re showering in their dorms and apartments.
Edsall talked about walking up to the practice field and the team was down 10 players, only eight offensive linemen on the field. They’ve been in a bubble. It has been something the program could control. Edsall likes control. What happens when 8,000 students show up on campus in mid-August and that control is diminished?
The players asked Edsall, what are his concerns? He said no one could tell him about game day with locker rooms that are particularly cramped on the road. Dress in the hotel? Bus to the stadium? Wear masks in the locker room?
Edsall recalled being up on the practice fields one day and calling Benedict.
“There’s no way we can do this,” Edsall said. “We just can’t get it done.
“Next day, walking up the hill with the players, they said there’s no way we can play a season.”
There are two ways to look at this. Every other football school is going through much the same thing and they are sucking it up through all the protocols. The other is if UConn really had no way of being ready, what the hell are all these other FBS schools doing?
“The student-athletes’ preparedness is very important to understand, particularly football,” Benedict said. “It was absolutely clear in talking to Randy and the players they were not given the opportunity to prepare themselves physically and mentally to take on a full season.”
In the original release, Wednesday morning, Benedict said, “The safety challenges created by COVID-19 place our football studentathletes at an unacceptable level of risk.”
They were the first FBS school to pull the plug. They made a huge deal of making it about the players. Still, neither Edsall nor Benedict wanted to comment on other schools and other conferences continuing to play and accepting that unacceptable level of risk.
UConn did the right thing, although the obvious thing. Edsall wanted to come off as particularly magnanimous for it. Looks like it may have worked.
Well played, UConn.