College football: Another Covid casualty
“It’s not quite as bad as canceling Thanksgiving,” said Stephen Collinson and Caitlin Hu in CNN .com. “But it’s close.” The college football season was thrown into chaos last week when two of the Power Five conferences—the Big Ten and Pac12—pulled out, “reasoning there’s no safe way to play in the middle of a pandemic.” The decision came after at least five Big Ten Conference athletes who were infected with the coronavirus developed myocarditis, a potentially fatal inflammation of the heart muscle that can leave lasting damage. A number of smaller conferences and individual schools have also pulled the plug. It’s a momentous turn of events in a country where “college football is a religion”—and a multibillion-dollar business. President Trump and other Republicans called on the remaining conferences to play their seasons. Trump understands that canceling this staple of American life will “shatter his fantasy world,” in which the virus is under control and all is well.
Canceling is the only sane move, said Will Leitch in NBCNews.com. Sadly, three of the Power Five conferences still plan on having unpaid students play a “collision-based sport amidst the greatest public health crisis in 100 years.” Their denial of science falls right in line with “the kind of selfish thinking that has made America an international joke.” Not incidentally, nine University of Oklahoma players tested positive for the virus this week. The fears of Covid are overblown, said WashingtonExaminer.com in an editorial. Given the “extremely low risks” to young players and the “great benefit that college sports confer” on players, spectators, and colleges themselves, to abandon the field “would be both irrational and irresponsible.”
In this presidential election year, the cancellation of games is becoming a political issue, said Tina Nguyen in Politico.com. MAGA world is blaming it on “the Trump-hating Left,” claiming it is Democratic fraidy-cats and health officials who are shutting down the all-American sport. It’s actually Trump who might get blamed, said Reid Epstein and Nick Corasaniti in The New York Times. As Americans mourn the loss of the “tailgating, jammed stadiums, and marching bands,” some are already directing their ire at Trump’s mismanagement of the crisis, especially as they see European soccer and South Korean baseball carry on. “Trump just blew it,” said Ohio Buckeyes fan Dennis Kuchta. “It’s a huge loss, and I don’t think people realize that yet.”