This Week's Obsession: What Now?
The Prompt: No fall sports.
The Responses:
Ace: WHERE DO WE EVEN BEGIN?
Brian:
Michigan Hockey is proud to announce the addition of @Matty_Beniers10 to the 2020-21 incoming class!#GoBlue | #NewBlue 〽️ pic.twitter.com/Ndqyc6AYa0
— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) August 12, 2020
or were you referring to something else?
Ace: I was referring to the Moe Wagner/Giannis incident.
Giannis just got EJECTED after head butting Moe Wagner pic.twitter.com/BPJKneicOv
— Overtime (@overtime) August 12, 2020
Brian: Honestly I'm surprised it's taken this long for someone to headbutt Moe Wagner. I mean this in the nicest possible way.
Ace: The only surprise here is it was the MVP and not, say, Draymond Green.
BiSB: Big Ten Twitter was very much on Giannis’s side.
Ace: Maybe Giannis is a low-key Purdue fan. Now, are we discussing these things because the outlook for fall sports is, uh, not great? Perhaps.
Brian: furk
Ace: We should probably begin that part of the discussion here: the Big Ten made the only right decision given the current circumstances.
BiSB: [a long silence ensues in MGoSlack]
[After THE JUMP: crickets……wait, CRICKET?]
---------------------------------------------
Ace: In a world where players are compensated and there have been stringent protocols put in place across the board, we may be in a different place. This isn’t that world.
BiSB: We can even be more specific: This was the only correct decision in a world where you have to rely on Rutgers.
Brian: I'm not sure that ending amateurism was going to do it, either. I'm dubious about the feasibility of a college football bubble even if limited to ~85 players since those players aren't going to be at one spot and some of them really want to party.
Ace: Yeah, even if the groundwork for this going wrong hadn’t been laid for decades (and decades), the general state of the country isn’t promising for any sport that can’t be contained to a bubble. It’s still not going well for MLB and I remain skeptical the NFL can pull off a season, and evidently several NFL players feel the same way.
Brian: Meanwhile I don't see how the YOLO conferences are going to accomplish this unless they go 100% fuck them kids. Even they're shutting down practices for outbreaks. When that happens during a game week, and it's going to, that week's game no longer happens, and probably the next week's game is right out as well.
BiSB: People apply the word “bubble” like they apply “RPO.” A true bubble makes a season workable, but a true bubble would NEVER be workable for college football.
Ace:
It’s not even workable for the NFL.
BiSB: If your bubble has to travel to another bubble, you’re gonna have issues. So, we’ve heard for a while that this was the inevitable result for the Big Ten. How much difference do we think the myocarditis news made?
Ace: A huge one, I think. I’ve said this a bunch on twitter, but: we don’t know the long-term effects of getting covid-19 yet, but we’re seeing some alarming early returns, and the uncertainty is a reason to shut down, not wait and see.
In addition to myocarditis, there’s also the presence of “long covid” in a number of cases, and that essentially presents the same way my illness does. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. And it’s definitely not worth the risk just to get in a season of football. This is also, to Brian’s point, an example of the gung-ho conferences 100% going fuck them kids.
Brian: Even if you completely discard the "is this a good idea" aspect it doesn't seem feasible if you connect the following dots from the ESPN article on COVID myocarditis:
- A German study with n=100 showed that 60% of recovered COVID patients had "ongoing myocardial inflammation."
- Most athletes with myocarditis can "safely return to sports after a restriction of activity for three to six months."
- The Big Ten already has more than 10 cases.
Given elevated COVID rates in athletic departments even before competition begins it's pretty easy to envision a version of the season in which nothing disastrous happens but big swathes of rosters are sidelined as a precaution, along with canceled games. And that hardly seems worth the trouble.
BiSB: It feels like the other conferences are looking for a better excuse for their fans. Not statistics and studies and fancy science-talk. They want to push forward until teams cannot answer the bell.
Ace: What I believe scared the Big Ten about myocarditis, and should terrify every conference, is it made real the possibility that a player or coach would have a serious cardiac event during a nationally televised game. I realize that’s deeply cynical, but here we are. We can’t see what happens to the people with covid. But, like, Hank Gathers is an indelible memory for a lot of people.
BiSB: We're already seeing some of it.
As an aside, it turns out those "is herd immunity Dabo's secret weapon?" takes aren't aging so well.
Brian: That's four CFB players who have publicly noted that COVID has done some pretty gnarly stuff to them, before the season's started. We're headed to 100+.
BiSB: It's also why a spring season doesn't seem exceptionally likely, absent a vaccine that gets rolled out in a super-efficient way.
Ace: Even then, you run into issues of playing two seasons in one calendar year with players who don’t have any sort of organized protection. At the very least, a spring season would probably have to be abbreviated.
BiSB: "Season" in this case is a generous term.
Ace: I mean, I’m still very much in the “school itself is not a good idea” camp, at least for in-person instruction. Which makes any of this really difficult to justify.
Brian: Guh all the stupid twitter takes on this. Michigan has already put as many classes as are feasible entirely online. They're refunding housing fees if you want to cancel. MSU is straight up saying "stay home unless you can't." Every university is caught in the same no-good-answers realm that football is and is taking as many precautions as possible.
And you are guaranteed to get some shades-in-car avatar rabbling about how "Justin Fields can't play football but he can sit in a lecture hall with 300 frat boys?!"
Buddy, Justin Fields didn't go to physical classes before COVID existed!
Ace: Also, while I trust high-level college athletes to be more disciplined than the average college student, the bar here is still “discipline of a college student.” I don’t even want to get into infantilizing, paternalistic bullshit like this:
Agree or disagree with Nick Saban? https://t.co/OXC5KXCzQ4 pic.twitter.com/sPxfsLoZVR
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) August 10, 2020
Seth: That "they're safer with us" talk is a red herring. At least regarding Michigan I have been told that any player who wants to remain on campus will be able to, and will have access to all the safety protocols they have now, regardless of whether there is a season.
Ace: It doesn’t come off to me as a great look to hold “you must play” over players’ heads to ensure their safety, so that’s good to hear.
Brian: Actually... I might believe that in the specific context of Alabama football. Nick Saban should have been put in charge of this from the drop.
Ace: Okay, fair, but the message still sucks.
Brian: It does. Michigan's cross-country coach nailed it though:
It wasn't just football that got the axe yesterday. Coaches of other fall sports at UM and MSU shared their thoughts on the cancellation.
— Andrew Kahn (@AndrewKahn) August 12, 2020
I liked this from Michigan men's cross country coach Kevin Sullivan.https://t.co/OjVqdkeSap pic.twitter.com/a19IQDuOF6
Ace: Yes. Other countries got this under control. The United States did not. That’s not on the players, but it does have consequences for the players. Which sucks! All of this sucks.
*bzzzzeeep*
BiSB: That's not true. Everything is fine. Nebraska will show you. They'll show all of us.
Brian: I tell ya, college football twitter the past few days has made it very clear why the US has the worst outbreak on the planet.
Ace: Because the media did it, right? The problems aren’t real until you talk about them.
BiSB: Or test for them.
[ /screeeeeeeeeetches up to the edge]
Brian: ...How are we supposed to follow the no politics rule when the politics literally cancelled football.
Ace: It’s very hard!
Brian: I'm gonna spend the next three months writing episode recaps of Deep Space 9. And it's definitely someone's fault.
*BLEEEEEEEEEEEEP*
BiSB: The most MGoBlog replacement would probably be UFRs of Civil War battles.
Ace: Speaking of which, we lost @seth.
Seth: I'm sorry...thing. Let me catch up?
Brian: It's okay you just got postponed.
Seth: You guys talked about myocarditis, specifically the likely risk of significant cardiac and pulmonary damage even to young people who don't feel major effects. It's also my understanding that these are preliminary findings. I know not everyone understands this to be a positive, but the science now might not be the science in a few months. So who knows; if the consensus changed would they revisit it?
BiSB: I suppose follow-ups of those kids four months from now might make a difference, but it would have to be a pretty finding to use it to justify a bastardized mini season. It's also hard to see how anything (short of a Big Ten Bubble) saves this basketball season.
Ace: That’s the one where giving up amateurism could’ve saved the day. Also hockey, given I’m watching an overtime NHL playoff game while typing this. The got-dang NHL can do this!
Gary Bettman!
Brian: I don't know that there's enough financial incentive to try hockey in a bubble, at least on the college level. It's a break-even sport where it does well. Basketball on the other hand could staunch a lot of the bleeding if everyone admitted that all basketball player classes were going to be online and there was some sort of compensation for being locked away from society for months at a time.
This will not happen and it's the thing I'm preemptively furious about.
Ace: I feel the same. It’s mostly pointless to add that hockey’s could be slightly more feasible because there are significantly fewer teams.
BiSB: But also significantly fewer resources.
Ace: And more players with obvious other pre-professional options.
Seth: The players laid out the most plausible roadmap literally in the 11th hour. The endgame is compensation but the short game could simply be all of the demands in #WeWantToPlay.
#WeWantToPlay pic.twitter.com/jvQhE7noGB
— Trevor Lawrence (@Trevorlawrencee) August 10, 2020
Ace: I think it’s too late to implement some of those. At least for the fall.
Seth: I want to explore what's less than a Big Ten season. I studied a lot of historical seasons and the percent that aren't farcical is smaller than anyone wants to admit.
Ace: Michigan twice played the D-III school my best friend played for about a century later. They count those.
Seth: Notre Dame played a hardware store. If Michigan can bubble 85 players and play Sr-Fr vs Jr-So they should do it. If they can play Michigan State, who for all our jokes has been responsible about this, they should do it.
BiSB: What would really make sense is to create a "Big Ten Teams We Trust" schedule, and play like five games.
Ace: It gets really tricky without compensation. Are you really offering a fair opt-out if you don’t lose your scholarship but everyone knows the guys who stick around are going to gain an edge in the eyes of the coaches?
BiSB: Shockingly, Schiano and Ferentz aren't on that list.
Seth: If college football history has taught us anything it's that these guys are wizards at getting around tricky compensation problems.
BiSB: People who say "well, they can opt out" are the same people who refer to "voluntary workouts" unironically. Sure, you can opt out. But do you think all coaches are going to be cool with it?
Ace: Yeah, getting around tricky compensation problems has generally been done by railroading players.
Seth: Yes it has. That hasn't stopped us from enjoying the last 150 college football seasons. I really don't think compromising on that somehow is going to change the direction things are going in.
BiSB: Last question: what was your favorite part of Nebraska's time in the Big Ten, and why was it Scott Frost Day?
Ace:
BiSB: Had us right where they wanted us. Just ran out of time.
Ace: The tides were turning.
August 12th, 2020 at 4:38 PM ^
....I would read the shit out of UFR's of old battles.
August 12th, 2020 at 4:43 PM ^
I second that. I've gone down some DEEP Youtube wormholes about famous battles and it would be great to read about how the Battle of Hydaspes and how battling war elephants was analogous to playing Wisconsin at Camp Randall.
August 12th, 2020 at 5:04 PM ^
Heck yeah! If Seth and Brian are looking for assistance, I believe Jane Coaston would be happy to share some thoughts...
August 12th, 2020 at 5:06 PM ^
How far back are we talking here? Details get sketchy in a hurry before the Industrial Revolution. We have a fair bit of documentation on, say, ancient Roman and Chinese doctrine, and can extrapolate a fair bit from that, but old historians often couldn’t even get troop numbers within an order of magnitude. From what I’ve found, a lot of what we know kind of had to be reverse-engineered.
August 12th, 2020 at 6:02 PM ^
I mean, why stick to human history? Why not go Middle-Earth and do the Battle of Five Armies or Helm's Deep?
Draftageddon of LOTR. Just spit-ballin' here.
August 12th, 2020 at 7:23 PM ^
Well, the first "battle" could be the pandemic of 1917 that ended World War II.
August 12th, 2020 at 5:39 PM ^
Absolutely! Since Covid started, I've been listening to Hardcore History by Dan Carlin daily. It's fascinating! A UFR that accompanied the episodes would make it even better though!
August 12th, 2020 at 6:47 PM ^
Jane and Jane's Bolded Alter Ego yelling about McClellan
August 12th, 2020 at 4:45 PM ^
I continue to believe that the YOLO conferences will play a game or two, one or more teams will have a massive outbreak and will have to cancel games, and the season will end with Vandy sharing part of the SEC crown at 2-0.
August 12th, 2020 at 9:45 PM ^
I believe that along the same lines, Alabama wants to play one game and claim the 2020 National Championship title.
August 12th, 2020 at 4:51 PM ^
Giannis' Twitter background picture has his Dad in a Michigan jersey. Ahh would've been nice to have had Giannis at Michigan for a season.
August 12th, 2020 at 4:51 PM ^
Deep Space 9 is the best Star Trek series.
August 13th, 2020 at 10:24 AM ^
Logged in to upvote this
August 12th, 2020 at 5:10 PM ^
Wait up a second for a minute - Notre Dame played a hardware store? I need more info to harass my Domer friends.
August 12th, 2020 at 6:38 PM ^
IIRC they ducked Northwestern to play a thrift store in Evanston.
No one has more meatball victories than ND. Chicago Light Artillery, Goshen, Knox, about 20 high school teams, Rush Medical, Chicago Physicians and Surgeons, and then some schools I never heard of. I would guess 60-80 in total. Maybe more.
August 12th, 2020 at 5:37 PM ^
Scott Frost is smarter than you. Not sarcasm.
Y’all been duped real bad. Enjoy it, for the mess will last a very long time.
August 12th, 2020 at 6:00 PM ^
Enjoy what?
August 12th, 2020 at 6:07 PM ^
Have the 150,000 dead people been duped as well?
August 12th, 2020 at 6:33 PM ^
Worldometer shows 169,855 people have died in the US, but who’s counting?
August 13th, 2020 at 8:57 AM ^
it is what it is
August 13th, 2020 at 9:57 AM ^
One day, it's going to magically go away. It will just disappear.
August 13th, 2020 at 7:57 AM ^
Worldometer is great and all, but are you aware of what percentage of those deaths have occurred in college-aged students? Very very few. Of the 43 million Americans aged 15-24, only 242 have died of COVID-19. Overall, people under 25 represent 291 of the 149,142 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.
August 12th, 2020 at 7:41 PM ^
I can tell you with near statistical certainty that Scott Frost is not smarter than me. Also not sarcasm.
The remainder of your post is ambiguous nonsense, so that’s tough to respond to.
August 12th, 2020 at 5:58 PM ^
One thing that is clear from as this: people do not like and often overreact to change. Embrace the future, baby. The past was never that great.
August 12th, 2020 at 6:02 PM ^
Draymond head butting Mo? No way, the kick in the nuts is Draymond’s go to move.
August 12th, 2020 at 6:04 PM ^
UFR Civil War battles? Sign me up! I’d pay cash money to read a Jane Coaston guest post breaking down McClellan’s stupidity
August 12th, 2020 at 10:42 PM ^
Or, for that matter, a panel discussion with Jane, Dan Carlin, Greg Jackson (History that doesn’t suck podcast), and the corpse of Shelby Foote over whose stupidity was more damaging to the union cause:
- McClelland
- Burnsides
- Hooker
- Rosecrans
thank god for Grant, Sherman, Hancock, and Porter.
August 12th, 2020 at 6:52 PM ^
It's hard to compare schedules from back in the day. You look at some of these and think "wow Division 3" but then Western Reserve University, merely half of a D3 school now, had a winning record against Ohio State.
August 12th, 2020 at 8:06 PM ^
Our Big Ten/Western Conf. schedule in war-and-flu truncated 1918 was
Chicago.
That's it. Just Chicago. We claim a Big Ten co-championship with a conf. record of 1-0-0
August 12th, 2020 at 8:28 PM ^
As we fookin' should. 'Merica.
August 12th, 2020 at 9:06 PM ^
People are going to get COVID, playing football with the correct mitigation measures does not make that more likely and perhaps affords for earlier detection and treatment of complications. Canceling the football season looks like the easy way out for a commissioner that may be in over his head. Don’t tell me “the school presidents made the decision”, The majority merely agreed with Kevin Warren. Delany would have looked at this at all angles and developed a consensus before making a decision. Mr. Warren appeared to want to be the first power five commissioner to make the decision so he could be the hero. Just like he pulled the trigger on the B1G basketball tournament. Sometimes when you’re new to a job or uncertain in your abilities you overcompensate. He has left a mess of discord between schools and the conference. Nebraska will likely leave for the Big XII not to mention all the recruits bolting to other conferences. Huge mess with a plethora of negative unintended consequences headed our way :-(
August 12th, 2020 at 11:12 PM ^
Do you seriously believed that Schlissel, who has a Phd in immunology, just went along with Warren??? If anything, it is much more likely that Schlissel forced the issue with Warren.
August 12th, 2020 at 11:47 PM ^
That's kind of how I figured it went down. Based upon the comments from coaches, I'm assuming AD's were leaning towards playing. I'm guessing it's the Presidents who said fall sports are a no go.
August 13th, 2020 at 12:38 AM ^
Then these B1G presidents better close down their campuses this year.
August 12th, 2020 at 9:18 PM ^
That's bullshit we have to play Chicago twice on the road in the same season. Who made up this schedule Delaney's Grandfather?
August 12th, 2020 at 9:23 PM ^
UFR of 17th century Britain.
The queen is dead, get the Scotsman for King. Catholic Guy Fawkes tries to bomb Parliament, oppress the catholics. King vs parliament, anglicans vs puritans. New king marries catholic, don't make us catholic, war between king and parliament, we don't need no stinking king, kill the king, hey wait a minute this Protector doesn't know what he's doing, where's the prince, boy this new king can party, we still don't need no catholics, hey wait a minute, how'd we get a catholic king, get the daughter & Dutch nephew to be queen and king and parliament runs the show but definitely no catholic king or queen again ever and what do you mean there aren't any protestants to be king, okay get the German to be king.
August 13th, 2020 at 10:00 AM ^
Charles I had great pad level from what I've heard though....
August 12th, 2020 at 11:10 PM ^
Brian could finally get around to all those Ohio State UFRS.
August 12th, 2020 at 11:18 PM ^
Don’t you think this board is angry enough already?
August 13th, 2020 at 12:30 AM ^
I would like to hear more Pitbull quashes virus stories
August 13th, 2020 at 12:36 AM ^
I find it hard to believe college athletes are going to be better off on their own. In fact the chances are good after going to several weekend parties that the players may be worse off. Often the 18-22 year old students can catch covid and have only minor or no symptoms yet the severe secondary effects may set in with out notice until severe damage is done. They will also spread it more through their parents and Grandparent who will not be so lucky with COVID. I guess since the university is not responsible, they have nothing to worry about. I would advice UM to close their campus in the fall semester. No students should be attending classes period!
August 13th, 2020 at 10:02 AM ^
Brian: I'm gonna spend the next three months writing episode recaps of Deep Space 9. And it's definitely someone's fault.
Actually, this doesn't sound too bad. I'd read that.
August 13th, 2020 at 12:32 PM ^
Early open high schools across the country are shutting down in numbers due to immediate outbreaks. Once college campuses are open for fall business, you know there will be issues. Players will be invected in droves (they get tested) and the season will officially shut down for all schools prior to the Sept 26 start.
Can't wait to see what happens at a party school like Clemson. Yikes ! If I was Trevor Lawerence, I would opt-out of the season and train at home where sheltering-in-place is possible. Just being on campus walking down a crowded sidewalk is HIGH risk. Potential lung damage or heart problems is serious shit for an elite athlete about to make $20+MM in the upcoming NFL draft.
August 13th, 2020 at 4:22 PM ^
No fall sports = no blaxploitation.
August 14th, 2020 at 10:06 AM ^
Wife Day just became every weekend. Lots of projects will get done.
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