dance break!

I've been throwing these in UVs but might as well break it out into its own thing as rumors fly willy-nilly about when the Big Ten might start, who is at fault for the Big Ten not starting, and whether or not Urban Meyer is into QAnon now. It's a little bit like a coaching search, except instead of try to scry what one group of decision-makers is doing there are upwards of a dozen different groups, a few of which are covered by people with potatoes for brains.

Then you have an independent wing of rumor-mongers with potatoes for brains.

Ok and a few more guarantees that didn't necessarily come true (YET). And a meeting on September 1st that didn't happen. And guaranteeing November 21 as the start date. But also October 10th. pic.twitter.com/4aELf9w2On

— HuskGuys (@HuskGuys) September 8, 2020

So instead of attempting to sift through this for what might be true this post is largely going to serve as a debunking item.

[After THE JUMP: everything is baffling]

Dan Patrick not as optimistic

The latest from Dan Patrick, who was one of the originators of the "they'll start October 10th" rumor:

“The Big Ten is still up in the air,” Patrick said. “If you were not with us in the first hour, I gave you an update from my source that there’s still a pushback from the medical community in the Big Ten to not play. I was told they simply don’t have enough teams to play.

“I was told that the Michigan teams — not gonna play. Illinois teams — that’s Illinois and Northwestern — are not gonna play. Maryland’s not gonna play. And Rutgers probably won’t play. That doesn’t leave you with much if you’re able to pull this off.

”And now, I’m told that the medical community within the Big Ten is trying to push to November now. It was Oct. 10, that was the target date so that they could get in a 10-game schedule and qualify for the postseason. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

Pushing it to November allows football to operate without students for a period of time and gives rapid testing get more established.

That's not to say that I'm taking that entirely at face value. If football does return, Michigan will play. Michigan is in fact one of the less cautious schools in the Big Ten when it comes to coronavirus. Their dorms are 70% full, move-in precautions were unenforced, resident advisors are furious, grad students are striking, the Faculty Senate is preparing a no-confidence vote, and dorm spread is already underway.

If the Big Ten does decide to resume in the midst of Michigan charging headlong into an iceberg it'll be impossible to argue that football shouldn't also careen around blindly. The University's primary goal these days appears to be soliciting donations, and opting out of football is likely to cause a riot.

Mycocarditis number wrong

The PSU doctor who said 30-35% of covid infectees developed myocarditis was incorrect. The rate is lower than that, but I didn't see a firm number. Because no one really knows anything. Some people think this is a reason to do things; some people think this is a reason not to do things. 

Pac-12 return to play approach

They think November is the earliest that a point-of-contact test will be widespread enough to play:

Scott said that it did not believe rapid tests like these would be available until late November when it decided to postpone the 2020 season in mid-August, one week before football training camp was set to begin. The Pac-12 hopes to begin playing sports around Jan. 1, 2021.

When the tests are fully online, the Pac-12 will be able to determine if point-of-care testing "prior to practice or competition can decrease or eliminate risk of infection." That alone would significantly reduce the threat of the coronavirus. Those testing positive could be promptly separated and quarantined slowing the spread.

The Pac-12 keeps saying things that make them seem like they're reasonable people making reasonable decisions. Something the Big 10 could look into maybe. They're currently getting dunked on by Larry Scott, the guy who built a hovering castle in downtown San Francisco and split the Pac-12 network into a fractal mass of billions of tiny networks only one organism is allowed to view.

Seems untenable

Either this kind of precaution gets dumped during football season or "team has no longsnappers" is going to feel like a Swedish massage:

Pruitt later added that 31 offensive players did not practice.

Again, majority of these are due to required quarantine after contact tracing. Some because of injury. Tennessee has "seven or eight" active COVID-19 cases on its roster.

— David Ubben (@davidubben) September 5, 2020

If you assume a ~105 man roster with walk-ons, that means this could happen every week of the season if a team gets spectacularly unlucky.

Mark Schlissel's not talking

I find this incredible:

Speaking to reporters while participating in a parent-led protest on the Big Ten’s postponement of football season, Harbaugh was asked six times in seven minutes about University president Mark Schlissel. He did his best not to publicly criticize a man who’s technically his boss, but the subtext wasn’t hard to see, even without the benefit of Harbaugh’s facial expressions.

His conversations with Schlissel?

“I have had none,” he said.

Does that upset him?

“You think maybe I’ve got some inside information or something. I really don’t,” he said.

This is par for the course for the Big Ten in regards the public. It is incredible that Schlissel hasn't talked to the head football coach at any point when football is the one thing that got canceled. So you've got the head football coach attending a protest against a decision the university president made.

Schlissel's managed to make almost every major group of stakeholders furious at him. I don't think he's going to be around much longer. Once the school hits the iceberg this is going to be the smoking gun:

An advisory committee convened by the University of Michigan’s president, Mark S. Schlissel, composed of several distinguished professors and campus leaders, delivered a 35-page report exploring the ethics of potential campus-return policies and proposing a framework for ethical decision-making.

But in a later letter to Schlissel, dated July 31, the Covid-19 Ethics and Privacy Committee sought “to underscore, with urgency, our concern that current plans for Fall 2020 will not meet the reasonable standard for safety recommended by our report, that good alternatives exist, and that it is not too late to pursue them.”

It is hard to interpret the university administration's actions as anything other than a foolhardy attempt to pretend things can continue on as they have been.