unverified voracity
give money to someone elseeeeee
nebraska
scott frost
coronavirus
100% jumbled confusion
xavier tillman
nba draft is friendly and nice
dick vitale
matt beniers
giles jackson
so angry he's squattin [Eric Upchurch]

Unverified Voracity Knows Nossing Comment Count

Brian August 13th, 2020 at 12:38 PM

Sponsor note. Richard Hoeg. A lawyer. A podcaster. An explainer of goings-on. A person you can hire in the event you start a new business, or already have one. Here's his logo.

hoeglaw_thumb

Contracts? Incorporation? He's got it covered. The machinations of the video game industry? He's all over it. You can do no better than Richard Hoeg, in these matters.

Should have got this up earlier. Michigan was in a tight battle with Georgia Tech at the top of the EDSBS charity bowl standings for a few days. Now they are… not.

We can claim no credit for this. But we can still push it over the goal line, which is currently about 11k away. This year I've commemorated a very special game, because as a society we are currently Rutgers watching a third string fullback score from 20 yards out.

zap

Donate. It'll feel vaguely good for a brief time. And you will see the full picture of Spencer in overalls.

[After THE JUMP: nobody knows!]

Nobody knows anything. This is not this site's usual exhortation to be skeptical of the leadership of any particular organization. This is merely reality: the Big Ten may have made a mistake. They may have done the right thing. I don't know. You don't know. They don't know. Nobody knows anything.

Bill Connelly on the situation:

In the social sciences, there is a concept called a "wicked problem." It was coined by University of California, Berkeley professor Horst Rittel and describes, in effect, a unique problem that has no right answers. Whatever you choose to solve a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation" that cannot be undone. You don't learn everything about the problem until you try (and probably fail) to solve it. Finding the least wrong solution requires creativity and early dialogue.

Apparently there was no dialogue about the potential of a spring season until approximately three days ago, and that can be put on the Big Ten's leadership, but the fundamental yes/no decision is not one that is clearly right or wrong. This is the equivalent of going for it in some marginal situation. The decision is ambiguous and will be judged entirely on a random one-off result. 

We'll only know in a few months, and even it might be a situation where there's a lot of chaos and a 50/50 coinflip that someone has a major cardiac event during a game doesn't come to fruition. COVID-19 may have already claimed its first healthy young athlete, as 27-year-old former FSU center Michael Ojo collapsed at practice and died soon after "recovering" from coronavirus. 

More medical details. Bruce Feldman has them, with even Pac-12 coaches saying they didn't see a way forward:

Before Monday night’s Zoom call, one Pac-12 coach said he thought his peers and the conference ADs were overwhelmingly in favor of having their teams doing walkthroughs and getting back out on the field, but that all changed in those 90 minutes.

“Whenever you start mentioning the heart, that is a whole different deal,” the coach said. “That got everybody’s attention. When you hear that even people who are asymptomatic can get heart issues, that’s what I think really scared people. It is a novel virus — what do we really know?”

Another Pac-12 coach told The Athletic on Thursday morning, “I don’t think there was any choice when we heard that. It wasn’t fair to the kids. To me, it was a no-brainer.”

Since the coaching fraternity has been publicly furious about canceling games, frequently defying their nominal bosses to make public statements, that's sobering.

Meanwhile an incredible quote from the Big 12 commissioner:

"If we get to the place where our doctors and scientists say, ‘You know what, you guys got two wheels off the tracks and you’re headed for a train wreck,’ we will pivot that day."

Responsible leadership is popping lateral wheelies in a train. College football 2020.

Scott Frost shrinks. Nebraska was outraged at the Big Ten's decision to postpone and/or cancel fall sports, and Desmond Howard is like THAT'S FINE GET OUT WE CAN FIND SOMEONE ELSE TO NEVER BEAT IOWA OR WISCONSIN:

Nebraska is not leaving the Big Ten West, where they do not have to go up against a national power to reach a conference championship game. Nebraska is not leaving the Big Ten, which gives them many many dollars in perpetuity in all years except this one. Nebraska is having a moment and should count to four.

Nebraska has counted to four.

Well done, Nebraska.

Never say Dick Vitale didn't do anything for you. ESPN's screecher in chief may not be good at saying things that are accurate and delivered at a reasonable volume level, but he indirectly helped push Xavier Tillman out the door:

For this, and this alone, we may be grateful.

Gonna save this tweet. Giles Jackson was impactful in limited time last year.

Sacrifice everything for hockey. No football. No students. No leaving the house. Shut everything except Yost down.

No nothin'. I would like to see this hockey team play.

Etc.: Duncan Robinson and Bam Adebayo are extremely effective basketball bros. Nico Collins lands 18th on Todd McShay's early mock draft. The Little Caesar's logo and its dark, hairy past. Cam York likes to fish. Jane explains college football to a Vox audience. Nick Baumgardner and Austin Meek on the fallout. GRIII interviewed by CNN.

Comments

enlightenedbum

August 13th, 2020 at 1:47 PM ^

Journalism conventions are so weird.  Jane probably knows more about college football than what, 95% of Americans?  Probably higher.  But because she is a political reporter first of all she has to farm out a ton of her reporting to Matt Brown and Nicole Auerbach as experts.  Which they are, and I know Auerbach in particular is a tremendous reporter.  But it's just really weird to me.

Joined: 06/06/2009

MGoPoints: 64498

MMBbones

August 13th, 2020 at 2:44 PM ^

Just visited the EDSBS Charity Bowl site for the first time.  A nice tummy rub reading "Michigan and its not even close" in response to a question about how many people donate from any particular school. It's not just a couple guys firing the money cannon. A large community of givers put Michigan at the top annually.

Joined: 08/28/2008

MGoPoints: 10078

dragonchild

August 13th, 2020 at 3:00 PM ^

“Whenever you start mentioning the heart, that is a whole different deal,” the coach said. “That got everybody’s attention. When you hear that even people who are asymptomatic can get heart issues, that’s what I think really scared people. It is a novel virus — what do we really know?”

FFS with this "aw shucks" rhetoric, and this is from someone who kinda sorta gets it.

WE KNOW IT DAMAGES THE HEART.

And the lungs.  And the kidneys, liver, brain. . . it has even resulted in some amputations.  It's a vascular disease, and since every living cell in your body needs blood to oxygenate it, it attacks everything.  Again, young people survive more often because they have more hit points.  They still wind up like they've kissed the undead.

Sure, "only a few" athletes would die.  (Never mind that coaches have been rightfully fired over one preventable death.)  Sure, injuries happen in sports.  We also try to prevent them.  Which is why there are penalties for playing without a helmet, etc.  Playing during a pandemic, you might as well litter every field with caltrops.  Hey, I estimate only 0.016% of players would be killed by the caltrops.  It would cripple thousands more, but we only care about deaths, right?  While we're at it why not thin out the rulebook and eliminate some safety equipment?  Destroyed knees and CTE aren't that fatal, either.

As I said in another thread, we know it damages the lungs, sometimes permanently, and athletes need them more than the rest of us.  They need 100% of what they have.  Me losing a sizeable chunk of my lung capacity to COVID scarring is manageable, but I work at a desk all day.  A talented player goes from having an NFL career to finished with that kind of damage.  It's not just a matter of lasting through the 4th quarter.  It's reduced conditioning time, reduced weight training, reduced practice, because they can't keep up.  You can't keep up in the NFL, you are unemployed.  This level of impact to one's health is only loosely tracked because again, for 99.9% of us, it doesn't matter.  Chest X-rays for "recovered" patients who can work in jobs because they don't involve peak athletic performance is the kind of "unnecessary expense" insurance companies and governments tend to shut down with a dynamite-loaded sledgehammer.  But what studies have been done indicate an estimated loss of capacity of up to thirty percent.  Whatever shape you were in before, you are very much alive but no longer an elite athlete if you've lost 30% of your lungs.

Proponents of having a football season are people publicly declaring they want a thousand more Grant Newsomes -- players very much alive but their playing careers ended in full view.  But hey, they wouldn't be dead, so it's all good?

Joined: 10/13/2011

MGoPoints: 61492

go50blue

August 13th, 2020 at 3:14 PM ^

So where are these studies on the long-term effects of this novel virus? It's only been around for 7 to 10 months so long-term studies cannot possibly have been done to the extent that we know what the long-term effects are and who is most likely to have lingering damage. 

Joined: 08/01/2010

MGoPoints: 481

B-Nut-GoBlue

August 13th, 2020 at 8:33 PM ^

I see how you read that but lung damage comes from all sorts of factors.  Trauma.  Toxins.  Auto- immune issues.  Other diseases of course.  And yes, other viruses.  We're seeing this virus cause some of these types of damage.  It's a big deal to/for some. Obviously not to you, we get it.

Joined: 09/30/2011

MGoPoints: 43766

matty blue

August 14th, 2020 at 6:26 AM ^

i’ve been saying this for a while - sure, the player “recovered “but lost… what?… 5% of his lung capacity? for a year?

that’s the kind of thing that takes you from elite to an a notch below elite. it ends careers.

grant newsome is a great example.  and he was LUCKY - he was at a place that will take care of him, and was a good enough student that he still benefitted from being placed at risk. there will be dozens of other players that won’t get that outcome.

Joined: 08/01/2008

MGoPoints: 39328

4th phase

August 14th, 2020 at 12:15 PM ^

Yeah you hit on something I don't think a lot of these athletes are taking into consideration. Presumably, everyone's goal is to make it to the NFL. The NFL is the top 1% of college players. So if you're an athlete and you lose even 5% of lung or heart capacity, you went from NFL prospect to just a guy. Even as a 1st rd cant miss guy, you exponentially increase your chance of being a bust.

Its counterintuitive to the athlete who thinks that playing this season is the only way they can make the NFL, but in fact playing this season very much puts that future in jeopardy. 

Joined: 12/12/2017

MGoPoints: 14170

Richard75

August 13th, 2020 at 3:55 PM ^

U-M WR usage is endlessly fascinating. I get why Jackson wasn't on the field much, but it's remarkable how often U-M WRs are noted for their lack of snaps or targets as opposed to getting heavy use. U-M hasn't had a player finish among the top 100 nationally in receptions the past three seasons.

Joined: 09/23/2008

MGoPoints: 5329

Yostal

August 13th, 2020 at 5:25 PM ^

So, I'm not saying we should, and absolutely keep the money cannon firing, but at the noon today update, Slippery Rock was only $500 or so behind Ohio State.

I think it would be kind of hilarious if we could get our Pennsylvania brethren past OSU as well.  Just a thought.

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 7703