COVID-19 can’t stop greed of colleges
It’s up to Congress to protect student-athletes
We are watching much of the college sports industry unnecessarily and unjustifiably bring college athletes back to campus — before any of their fellow students — in the middle of the raging COVID-19 pandemic. Athletes have been brought back to campuses by coaches and athletic directors for “voluntary” workouts with assurances that every coronavirus testing regimen, safety protocol and isolation possibility had been thoroughly studied and policies put in place.
These coaches and administrators are misleading athletes and their parents. When they brought athletes back to campus, they knew they couldn’t control the virus. They knew hundreds of athletes — across multiple sports — would be convening and spending hours together, breathing, coughing and sweating next to each other. They knew college athletes would mingle in bars and clubs in college towns. Every day, we read about more and more college athletes who have tested positive for COVID-19 and athletic programs having to be temporarily shut down because their practices resulted in numerous infected players.
Economics vs. safety
Why is it that only the Ivy League has smartly canceled their fall sports seasons? I can only conclude that it’s because our country’s big-time sports programs — along with the NCAA, which was supposedly created to protect college athletes — are more concerned with economics than the safety of their athletes. Their ambitions are filled with visions of multimillion dollar TV contracts, not athlete well-being.
The public, in general, and athletes and their families, in particular, are being conned by the higher education institutions in this country. College athletic directors — and apparently their school presidents as well — seem to be more concerned with missing out on media revenue and disappointing major donors than doing the right thing on behalf of the athletes who attend their schools.
I started the League of Fans to fight for justice, fair play, equal opportunity and civil rights in sports and to encourage safety and civic responsibility in the sports industry and culture. Since then, I have followed every exploitative abuse imposed on college athletes: poor handling of injuries and medical issues (including perhaps the most important issue in sports today: brain trauma, concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy), educational fraud, economic exploitation, and even fatalities at the hands of coaches and trainers using abusive training practices. And on and on.
When it comes to athlete welfare, many major institutions of higher education have flunked. Public embarrassment hasn’t worked to reform college sports, as evidenced by the constant scandals in this business.
Whistleblowers haven’t stopped academic fraud. Jordan McNair’s death in 2018 at the hands of the University of Maryland’s football program has been largely forgotten.
College athletes don’t have powerful player unions to muscle big-time college athletic departments. They don’t have collective bargaining agreements with protections for health care and other issues.
Blow the whistle
As such, Congress must act. Kudos to Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., for filing the College Athlete Pandemic Safety Act that blew the whistle on colleges and universities pressuring athletes to sign waivers of liability when they return to campuses to practice and play. Kudos to Reps. Donna Shalala, D-Fla., and Ross Spano, R-Fla., for pushing a bill that calls for a study regarding intercollegiate athletics reform.
I’m hopeful that the Senate will soon follow the House and take action in order to address the multitude of social justice issues in college sports.
This action is especially pertinent today — in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic — in order to remind higher education administrators that consumer safety — in this case, college athlete safety — must come first, not sports media dollars.