“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.”

What if the answer to "why can students come back to classes if we can't have football?" is "let's not do either"?

They did not go with the answer of let’s not do either did they?  They decided to go with school being open with kids back in dorms and everyone back living in Ann Arbor. This decision equals a hell of a lot more money than $60 million or so lost from not playing football. UM has a $9.6 billion budget.  Clearly not making it worse has a price tag they are willing to accept, $60 million and a whole lot of negative PR if they don’t cancel vs. closing the campus for a year, much greater than $60 million which they are not willing to pay.

I fairly certain that 43,000 students on campus (acting like 20 year olds do) is going to be just bit more of a factor in spreading the virus than 100 or so students playing football. It does not seem like they don’t want to make it worse.

I agree. Football + pandemic = bad idea. I just think they lose their argument by canceling football while brining kids back to live in dorms for classes. 

each time when I've communicated with a doctor friend who's head of ER for a large hospital system, he's  pointed out that "the level of ignorance and casualness (re: coronavirus) is staggering"

another hospital doc/hospital exec I know summed it up this way (paraphrase): 'we're fighting against two enemies, one - coronavirus - we can win, the other - stupidity - we're losing and probably can't win'

This is what real analysis looks like.  Math and science, all together now!

let's not do either.  obviously.

argh.  double post.

however, i'll repeat.  let's not do either.

Brian's argument about cancelling/postponing the 2020 football season "for the health of the community" isn't a bad one in isolation, but how genuine the Big Ten & schools are in articulating that as the primary reason is ENTIRELY colored by other decisions. And a result, it strikes me as incredibly cynical & disingenuous.

Yes, on the margins cancelling football games is safer than playing the football games. But that's not the only decision being made here.  In this case, the Big Ten is allowing the athletes practice their sport for 20 hours per week. More important, however, is that the university presidents seem to be allowing the tens of thousands of regular students onto campus.  Even if they go with 100% online classes, there is a MASSIVE superspreader event having 18-22 year old kids live in dorms, socialize, etc. in & around campus.

This is the equivalent of ordering a Diet Coke at the drive-through because you're on a diet but then still ordering the Super-Sized Double McWhopper w/ Cheese (and a small frosty).

Yes, technically ordering the Diet Coke is marginally better than ordering the same meal with a regular Coke. There is no argument with that, but it isn't nearly the entire scope of the decision making process. If one is REALLY serious about the proverbial unhealthy diet, one wouldn't be at the drive-through in the first place.

And yet, here we are.

In reality, this is what I think is going on:

1. The university presidents know it's unhealthy for the student population to be on/near campus, but they can't help themselves financially.  If they close the campus entirely & go 100% to Zoom classes that the students take from their old bedrooms at their parent's home, the universities will lose a TON of money in room/board, and will be unable to justify their outrageously high tuition bills for a year of glorified YouTube & Zoom lessons. So, the financial pressure is there for them to keep things as "normal" as possible on campus in order to maintain those income flows.
    
2. Although the revenue from Big Ten football is lucrative, it's likely not as much as what would be lost if Michigan suttered it's entire campus for the semester/year. 
    
3. As a practical matter, it's veryp possible that football would just become impractical anyway later this season if the infection reate on teams get high enough.  Plus, if a player ever died on the field during a nationally televised game, it'd be a PR nightmare.
   
   So, what they did was pre-emptively cancelled the football season to avoid the PR nightmares & to make a big show to the public that they are "doing something." Although it marginally helps the "health and welfare of the community", this is the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a paper cut (which is also relatively cheap to do) while there is a giant gaping head wound that is going almost entirely untreated (which would otherwise be very expensive to address). However, addressing the paper-cut is being done in a very public & proactive way that will make headlines. To anybody not paying very close attention, the EMT is doing a hell of a job, and sure, the patient is marginally better off compared to the EMT doing nothing. 
   
   But that big gaping head wound is still unaddressed, and it's being largely unaddressed due to to the relative expense it would take to address it properly.

It’s simply not feasible to play regardless of questionable safety concerns, which the other conferences will soon see.  

If a game can’t be played with a positive test from a single player within what, a few days of a game, only a smattering of games will actually get played and then what do you have? If you play after a single positive test then you risk outbreak during an effing pandemic.

I was totally that guy on the message board. Public health matters more than football. Sorry.

One area the media is doing a really bad job on:

There is mounting evidence that even asymptomatic carriers are seeing damage to their heart and lung tissue. 

Everyone keeps saying these students aren't seeing any effects... That's just not true, they just don't know it yet. 

Might as well rip the band-aid off with this one...

• Masks should not be mandated for Covid-19.  If you are concerned, protect yourself.
• Seat belts should not be mandated for adults.  If you want to kill yourself, feel free.
• Any drug should be legal for adults.  If you want to fry yourself, feel free.
• The age required for volunteering to serve in the military should be the same, or older, than the age required to vote, drink, and smoke.
• Same-sex, nor opposite-sex, marriage should be "legal".  Government should have absolutely nothing to do with marriage.
• Any illegal immigrant should be deported back to country of origin.  Travel expenses paid out of aid to that country, if applicable.
• Abortion should be legal up to X days after conception.  (I'm open to what X is, but it ought to be legal for at least some period.)
• Religion should have nothing to do with government, and visa-versa.
• Most guns ought to be legal to own.  (Haven't decided where my line in the sand is.  Automatics?  Yes.  Nukes? No.  Somewhere in-between.)

Aww hell, I'll stop there and figure I'll get plenty of negs with just these alone.  :-)  At least I'm hated by both Republicans and Democrats.  I'm still curious, for the pro-maskers:  What mortality rate does it take for you to feel masks ought to be mandated?  Why not mask up every flu season?  Heck, why not wear masks every day for the rest of your life?  It will save lives.

Bingo! Please pin this post to the top of the site until further notice. I can't believe there are still people who can't or won't grasp that's it's not (just) about the players; it's about all the people with whom they'll come into contact. Cardinal rule of covid: Social distancing is essential and non-negotiable. A contact sport involving dozens of players is the exact OPPOSITE of what's appropriate. Anyone who suggests otherwise is either stupid, willfully ignorant, or sufferent from contact-related concussive syndrome. Death to football logic.

This is a league that added Rutgers and Maryland solely to bilk people in East Coast states who don't care about college sports

As someone who lives in the Northeast I take offense to that.  Although it's probably accurate for 90% of people on the east coast north of VA because of the NFL and lack of P5 blue bloods.  But, PA is pretty danged close to NJ and at one time Syracuse was a national brand.  Crazy to think how long ago it was since McNabb & Freeney were tearing up the Big East.

I'll make a bold prediction. After November, we won't hear much about Covid anymore. Coverage may even start slowing down to a trickle by mid November.

As said above, who knows that the "real" thought process was by the university presidents. 

But for an academic institution, I think the real travesty would be to have fall sports (including CFB) before putting into measures (e.g., frequent testing?) that allow undergrads to work in research labs, do 'academic' extra-curriculars (e.g., debate) etc.

So in that context, not doing an "extra-curricular" like football makes sense even if the activities of 85 CFB playersx would make little impact among 10,000s of other students. 

Amen, Brian. 

I'm sad that there won't be any Michigan football this fall, but I do not see any way in which college sports can be conducted in a reasonably safe way. At the end of the day, it's much more important to arrest the spread of the pandemic than it is to watch my favorite sport for a season. 

Hopefully things have improved enough/there is a vaccine so they can play in the spring. If not, them's the breaks. 

My daughter has been going to daycare since the pandemic without issue. This has not resulted in disaster. The center has not needed to shutdown for any reason other than low census. 

Brian, thank you.  I don’t always agree with you (usually do), but I would like to say thanks for having a common sense and scientific approach to your writing. 

Have to think liability issues played a big role in this. The same parents who want the season to happen would be first in line to sue if their son ended up with health issues for the rest of their life because of playing during the pandemic.

An opposing viewpoint from Tom Mars:

https://www.buckeyextra.com/sports/20200817/attorney-believes-justin-fieldsrsquo-attempt-to-have-big-ten-play-football-this-fall-could-be-successful

If you could get college football to happen in a bubble the way the NBA and NHL are operating you’d have a case. But in the NBA’s case you’re dealing with 30 teams with what I believe is a max of 17 guys on the active roster. They also happen to be professionals getting paid so it’s easier to look them in the eye and say “this is what you’re gonna do in order to play. You’re getting paid seven figures so sack up and do it.” Doing this for ~ 60 amateur football teams with roster sizes of 80 or so just isn’t logistically feasible. Likely not economically feasible either. 

I get the players and coaches frustration. Especially a guy like Harbaugh, who’s program has been on top of its shit. But you can’t control how on top of its game that Rutgers is. Or OSU. Or MSU. Or anyone outside your walls. And the virus don’t give two fucks how much and how often you test. It’s going to slice through your team like a hot knife through butter, and then god knows who your team comes into contact with before they realize they themselves have the virus. Would you be willing to play if you know that doing so is going to cause at least one person to die?

Big Ten made a very unpopular choice, and it’s going to hurt a lot of people’s bottom line. But when LSU, Alabama, Clemson, and Oklahoma are being dragged through massive class action lawsuits 4-5 years from now by former players who play this season but suffer heart and lung damage that ended their pro career, the Big Ten will be glad it gets to sidestep that. The loss of revenue hurts this year. Losing millions upon millions of dollars in lawsuits and suffering a PR firestorm that will take years to just extinguish and get past is even worse. 

The level of doggedness and passion apparent in the letter drafted by the Michigan players' parents for the Big Ten is impressive.

But even more than that it's telling about where we're at as a nation and why we're so embarrassingly and tragically impacted by the virus.

If you took the attention to detail and relentless approach in that letter and we had responsible leaders focusing that energy on the President back in say March and April, the letter to the Big Ten wouldn't be needed. No doubt in my mind.

But we're not that country anymore. We save our passion for things pertaining only to our close family, making money, or recreational/entertainment activities.  We passively observe our own demise in many other important areas which actually deserve and need that passion. 

Donald Trump obviously didn't come to power in a vacuum. He was vomited out to prominence by a deeper sickness. And he was and still is allowed to lazily fail without accountability by a similar sickness.  

The whole "let them play" family of movements all over the country says it all about where our values are and why this is only going to get worse.  It's inevitable. 

And of course playing college football right now is both irresponsible and arguably in poor taste.  That goes without saying. And we'll keep piling up the bodies but still avoid facing the obvious lesson of this pandemic.

There is no substitute for putting in the work and sacrifice. 

My only question is how are the players any safer without football. They will have weekends off to party and catch COVID. Please don/t tell me 18-22 year old student athletes are going to stay locked up in their homes all weekend. At least Harbaugh would keep track of them more and tell them not to leave the campus after the football Saturday;s, since it would be important to the team. Oh well, I guess it is to late. The horse already left the barn. I know a lot of people are hoping the ACC/Big 12 and SEC will fail miserably. There may be some outbreaks on teams but I think they will go on with their season and our players most likely will get sick as well. 

I don't really disagree with your conclusions overall.  Just want to point out that the comparison to local politics where some groups of people on one side of an issue don't show up to the meetings doesn't seem to fit here. It looks like all people even remotely linked to college football are participating in the conversation. Also, if "knowledge about COVID shifts daily" as you say it does then one could argue neither side has solid ground to stand on.

I’ve largely stayed out of Covid discussions on the blog because it’s overly pointless, but honestly I’ve reached my point where it’s time to get some things off my chest. 
 

First, hang ringing towards people of opposite political values needs to end. All it is to me is an attempt to deflect your own selfish behavior on to someone you don’t like. Trump voters don’t stay 6 feet away from each other. Also, Biden voters can’t stay 6 feet away from each other. Probably .1% of people have sat at their home and only left for essentials during Covid and to act like it’s only Trumpers that do is comical. 
 

Secondly, there is no doubt we live in the most selfish country on earth. Go read the sacrifices men and women went through in this country during WW2. What we should be doing is a cakewalk compared to that and it went on for close to 4 years. This has been 5 months! Honestly, what scares me more than anything is the thought of how people would react to food rations, oil rations and a draft in 2020. General rioting would be the least of your concern.  The fact people can’t even make a few sacrifices to combat an airborne illness is sad.

Lastly, we are paying the price for our country / states running up huge debts year after year, so be sure to thank all of your representatives this November for the fact almost no government entity runs at a break even or surplus so that people can be helped during these trying times. I’m for as limited government as possible, but government should exist to help out people during crises. Thanks to our own idiocy, our choices during Covid were either mass death or everyone goes broke. Honestly, our country gets more and more depressing each year.  
 

God speed to everyone; we’re nowhere close to being out of this yet.