Bigger foe to playing may lurk on campus, not on field

We’ve reached the point in the pandemic where Lane Kiffin stands as a voice of reason.

The now first-year head coach at Mississippi is challenging his players to do the right things socially and away from the football facility to limit potential exposure to COVID-19.

At the same time, “I think you’ve got to be realistic,” he said Monday. “Everyone can pretend it happens away from here. But they’ve got to go out of their way to do it because other kids aren’t doing it – and adults. … If people think people are doing this, well, open your eyes. This ain’t kids. I mean, adults don’t do it. Just drive through downtown (Oxford) and look around or look at pictures on the internet of other places.”

If this college football season does start and finish as the Southeastern, Atlantic Coast and Big 12 Conferences are still hoping, we shouldn’t award championship rings to one team. Every single player will deserve one.

These players would have done something no players before them have even been asked to do and something you couldn’t realistically expect.

It’s one thing for coaches to enforce team rules. It’s another to have to ask players to have no social life, to sit in a dorm room or apartment until it’s time to leave for practices and games, to ignore girlfriends and buddies, to resist being a typical student on campuses where seemingly everyone else is having fun.

“It’s going to be hard for me to enforce it. I don’t live with them 24 hours a day,” Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt said. “Our kids do understand, and it comes down to decision-making.”

For all the hand-wringing about college football’s uncertain status, why hasn’t there been more debate about institutions bringing students back? If playing football isn’t safe in a relatively controlled environment, why would classrooms and dorms – uncontrolled environments – somehow be OK?

Concerns took a back seat to very real, very urgent financial concerns over what universities’ bottom lines would look like if classrooms were empty, tuition wasn’t paid, residence halls weren’t full and university bookstores couldn’t sell anything.

In the academic community, opening campuses for in-person classes was viewed all summer as an essential step toward playing football. Yet paradoxically, doing that was going to make it tougher to ensure a safe season. Teams have been working out on relatively empty campuses for weeks, and there have still been bouts with COVID-19. The Volunteers have had 23 players test positive at one time or another, Pruitt said Monday.

But as students return after being cooped up for months, you have to expect the virus will flourish as they cut loose a little bit. Honestly, would you have resisted doing it at that age?

The treacherous road to this college football season isn’t getting any easier.