We Know You Want To Play
In the aftermath of the Big Ten's decision to postpone, and likely cancel, the 2020 season there's been a cottage industry in open letters, that least persuasive of persuasive devices. Various groups of Big Ten parents from Iowa to Ohio State to Nebraska and now Michigan have sent strongly worded letters to the league office. Justin Fields has started an online petition.
Some of these letters are Big Mad: the Iowa one drops "appalling" and then "infuriating," "unacceptable," and "offensive" right in a row. Some are more measured: the Michigan one does not read like it was written by that one guy on the message board everyone rolls their eyes at. But they all have one thing in common. These letters have a zero percent chance of changing the Big Ten's stance.
This is a league that added Rutgers and Maryland solely to bilk people in East Coast states who don't care about college sports out of a dollar each month. The Big Ten likes money. The Big Ten wants money. The Big Ten just decided to forgo nine digits of revenue after consulting with a large pile of doctors and lawyers.
An open letter telling the Big Ten things they are already acutely aware of—a lot of people like football—because that's where the money comes from is among the more pointless exercises I've yet seen.
[After THE JUMP: the beatings will continue until exponential math is understood]
Complaints about transparency are bullshit processism that I, a local politics knower, have seen over and over again as NIMBYs try to challenge any and every change with endless appeals to "community" input. The community they are talking about is always unrepresentative and always mad, because people who think a new building is okay don't show up.
Asking for the exact data that caused the Big Ten to cancel at a time when knowledge about COVID-19 shifts daily is a bad faith argument. They told you why they canceled: they don't think it's safe. It's a global pandemic. They don't want to make it worse.
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Now, a brief aside about exponents.
Exponential math is unintuitive. I am a person who has taken the math classes and had embarrassing work experiences when my code was theta(not real good buddy)—in human-speak, when I'd written some computer code that scaled exponentially and thus froze the app as soon as it got asked to anything sort of big. And even I was like "really?" when a study came out claiming that instituting distancing measures a week earlier would have more than halved NYC-area deaths:
It is hard to wrap your head around numbers that act like that. But when you do it you reach one of two conclusions:
- if the virus is still containable every case avoided counts
- if we're completely boned there's not going to be a season anyway
I am in camp #2 since the US has already had 5.5 million cases—a quarter of the world's total. I do not think people understand the likelihood that this fall is already shot to hell.
What if the answer to "why can students come back to classes if we can't have football?" is "let's not do either"?
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The United State has the worst outbreak in the world primarily because people have not taken coronavirus seriously. Open letters complaining about the sacrifice you have to make but don't wanna are exactly why we're here. Football parents complaining that their kids should be able to take a risk fail to generalize that risk. CFB will not be in a bubble, cannot be in a bubble.
Therefore every infection on a football team is another vector in the world. Another reason schools will not be open this fall. Another reason daycare is going to be a disaster. Another way for someone old or vulnerable to die. The Big Ten could have God come down from the clouds and personally guarantee that every Big Ten football player will come through the season in perfect health and the league could still convincingly argue that shutting sports down was the moral and ethical thing to do.
If you want to do something useful in the hopes of a spring season, advocate for the development of a protocol that uses the recently approved point-of-contact saliva test as a way to have safe football—for everyone, not just athletes—in the spring. Advocate for a nationwide testing system that will get the virus under control. Quit wishing things were one way.
August 18th, 2020 at 10:54 AM ^
So we can't have football because football kills granny?
Even though granny is at least two degrees of separation away from football, football kills granny.
Even though granny can quarantine herself to keep from getting Covid-19 or is already somewhat quarantined in an end-of-life care facility like a nursing home, football kills granny.
Even though (to the best of my knowledge) every B1G state has a mask mandate, football kills granny. But I might be wrong about that one. I know that Michigan and Ohio have mask mandates, even in places like public parks. I haven't seen a stranger's smile in about two months.
Even though there are 8 trillion ways to spread Covid-19 that don't involve playing football, all of which have been taking place, given that there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 cases in college towns already before college football. Washtenaw County already has 2,657 confirmed cases as of now. Probably way more real cases. Good luck trying to stop that community spread, folks Hey wait a minute, I thought that mask mandates were supposed to do that? Michigan has had a mask mandate for quite a while now. Even at a sunny outdoor swimming pool you have to observe social distancing. And it's still not enough.
Does everyone remember this graph? I do because it was endlessly farted into my face back in March -- by the same people telling me that we can't have football because football kills granny.
Remember "flatten the curve?" We flattened the curve. But the people who told us "flatten the curve" didn't just want to flatten the curve. People like Brian Cook are now saying that we have to quarantine the virus into extinction or come out of our bubbles when a vaccine is developed -- a year after the pandemic begins if we're really lucky. But probably more like two years. Or maybe three. Nobody knows. This is utter insanity. You can't stop a virus from spreading. You can maybe slow the rate and take reasonable steps to protect those at risk (i.e. granny). But you can't stop it. Nor should you try. That is the fundamental premise underlying "flatten the curve" -- you slow the virus enough to where your country's medical facilities can handle the cases. We did that.
Has anyone tried mentally cataloging all of the activities that we have restricted or cancelled because they kill granny? School for elementary kids. Music education for elementary kids. Birthday parties and playdates for kids. Amateur sports (or in college football's case -- fake amateur sports). Restaurants at half capacity. Airlines on the verge of collapse. Empty hotels and cruise ships. Mask mandates in most of the country. Travel quarantine requirements. Remote working for office workers. What are the long term health and welfare effects of all of those?
Unemployment is in the double digits. It was up around 15% back in April. We might double the national debit in a matter of a year or two to keep the economy from total collapse. What the fuck more do you people want in your unrealistic quest to save granny from the virus that was already uncontainable by the time that Chinese New Year wrapped up earlier this year? Anyone who thinks that we could have stopped this by then is living in la-la land. God only knows when this virus started spreading. The cake was baked before we ever heard the words "Wuhan flu".
I'm glad that people are finally at least acknowledging that this this isn't about the health of kids, at least. That represents progress after months of intellectual dishonesty.
tl,dr: Play the fucking games.
August 18th, 2020 at 3:19 PM ^
Very well said Brian. I didn't watch all of Warren's interview on BTN, but just generally confused when people say there was no reason given for their decision???
I think it was pretty clear they stated too much uncertainty with the disease.. of all the member schools I like Minnesota and PJ Fleck's response the best and its amazing that people are still underestimating the effects of this disease.
August 19th, 2020 at 12:39 AM ^
If you ignore all the data...then yes there is too much uncertainty.
August 18th, 2020 at 6:56 PM ^
Thank you for saying all of this, in this way. It won’t stop all of those people who shove their fingers in their ears and go “La la la la la.. I don’t want to hear things I don’t like.. la la la la la la!” from doing the same, but for a few people who genuinely want to understand the problem, I think they’ll understand now.
August 19th, 2020 at 12:35 AM ^
Bad take.
August 19th, 2020 at 7:17 AM ^
Thank You Brian. Good to have some sanity laid out here.
Can't believe I'm going to type this but it seems like the BIG 10 is actually doing something akin to leadership here what with making a correct but unpopular and expensive decision and all. Maybe that leadership isn't entirely motivated by their better angels, but it's a start. It is possible that better days are not too far past the horizon.
August 20th, 2020 at 12:30 PM ^
Not sure that I can actually paste this image, but I'll give it a shot.
Here is my take. I wouldn't expect that we would put people in the stands, at least not most of us - maybe limit it to family and socially distanced students or something reasonable. Or not at all, so be it.
What I don't get is that the percentage of young people that end up hospitalized let alone worse is extremely low according to the CDC. Roughly, 0.1% of kids age 5-17 end up needing hospitalization. So, if we take the right precautions, as the team has shown, I think this number for the players can be substantially lower. So, why cancel the season? The numbers aren't adding up for me. What am I missing?
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