This Week's Obsession: So You Wanna Have a Season
THE PROMPT:
So, there’s a football schedule.
THE RESPONSES:
Brian: And confirmation that the Great Brandon Schedule Disaster has been repaired!
Big Ten statement on moving MSU-Michigan game from East Lansing to Ann Arbor (among others), adding that “the rotation of these games in future seasons will be reset based on this year’s location.” pic.twitter.com/QMCFI6svoZ
— Chris Solari (@chrissolari) August 5, 2020
Ace: That’s probably the most relevant news to come out of this.
Seth: Next global pandemic we should totally get rid of seat licenses.
Brian: Mmmm silver lining.
Ace: Michigan needs one, because…
Predicted record with updated schedule pic.twitter.com/bOIU0Ldfvk
— PlannedSickDays (@PlannedSickDays) August 5, 2020
Remember: being good naturally means you’re going to be towards the bottom of this. Michigan is the least bottom of the good teams.
Brian: We really need to do these SOS rankings without the You Don't Play Yourself bias.
Seth: Michigan is the only one of the five contenders playing the other four. Wisconsin and Ohio State skip each other as well as Penn State and Minnesota, respectively.
Though to be fair, Ohio State already had the Big Ten's easiest You Don't Play Yourself SOS, and added a trip to Purdue, which isn't frightening to them at all.
Ace: Week One, that could may possibly actually happen.
Seth: Yeah, but to us. Ohio State starts with Illinois (on a Thursday) and Rutgers.
[AFTER THE JUMP: We can't put them in a bubble because THAT would make the players who are surrounded by well-paid professionals supported by payouts from owning a cable network that dictated conference expansion based on how many out-of-market cable subscribers it can add seem like they're not playing this just for fun.]
The road to the Big Ten championship goes through this guy. [Bryan Fuller]
Brian: I can't get that bent out of shape about it because the chances that Michigan wins the division without beating OSU are close to 0 and the chances they win the division in the event they beat OSU are close to 100.
Ace: That’s true. It’s also hard to get bent out of shape about any of this. Especially since they fixed the OSU-MSU thing.
Brian: I led with the thing that is definitely relevant for a reason.
BiSB: But operating on the wild theory that the season at least gets going... poor damn Indiana.
Brian: uh aren't they 9th on that SOS list?
Ace:
Sorry, Indiana pic.twitter.com/LK9mAoslaJ
— billlandis25 (@BillLandis25) August 5, 2020
Rough twist!
BiSB: And they follow THAT with Minnesota and Michigan.
Brian: I see at least one stirring near-victory on that list.
Seth: So I'm looking at this schedule as a list of games with a decreasing likelihood they will be played. The bye weeks are planned to catch any that get missed. So chances are Michigan plays Purdue, Minnesota, and Penn State this year, and Ohio State plays Illinois, Rutgers, and Purdue, and they tie for the national championship.
Ace: Related: I mentioned that Michigan going to Indiana the week before they go to Ohio State as a trappy trap game and people pointed out this has happened several times recently. I’d like to clarify that was the point, given how those games played out.
Brian: I'm not sure what you're getting at though. Indiana softened us up?
#CHAOSTEAM's greatest trick was convincing the world that #CHAOSTEAM didn't exist. [Fuller]
Brian: I guess Mr Likes To Jump On You Like A Dick did that one year.
Seth: Indiana also has a terrible habit of exposing something about Michigan that Ohio State ruthlessly exploits before we've had time to fix/heal it.
Ace: Also most of those games have been somewhere between somewhat and mortally terrifying.
Brian: True, but I don't think OSU wouldn't have found the crack in the foundation without the Hoosiers.
Seth: It's not so much that they find the crack but that Michigan spends the second half showing how they respond to it.
Ace: But when the Hoosiers crack Chase Winovich… Sorry, I didn’t mean to digress this far.
BiSB: I get why they moved The Game to October, but they may as well have scheduled it for Smarch Threeveth at Purple O'clock. If it ain't September, it ain't happening.
Brian: I think we've all made our takes on the likelihood of sports clear.
BiSB: I guess I'm wondering why it isn't in September.
Brian: We're already prepping our UNDEFEATED AGAINST OSU 2020 shirts Bryan don't ruin it.
If you beat Penn State without Parsons, does it even count? [Barron]
Seth: So yeah some rather important players are already opting out. If Michigan's schedule is indeed Purdue-Jug-PSU, they get PSU and Minnesota without arguably their best players.
Ace: No arguably about it in the cases of both Micah Parsons and Rashod Bateman.
Seth: And Jacub Panasiuk. Let's not forget Jacub.
Ace: If there’s a wave of opt-outs, it seems more likely to hit the NFL-prospect-laden Buckeyes than Michigan.
Seth: You're forgetting the first rule of college football: Everything works out for Ohio State.
Ace: But, well, that program has a horseshoe… yeah.
Brian: Correct. No OSU players will opt out. They put microchips in their brains.
Ace: I think Justin Fields has in fact already said he doesn’t plan to opt out.
Brian: See? Microchip brains. All rewired and shit.
Ace:
Players have begun to opt out of the college football season, but Justin Fields and Shaun Wade have no plans to follow suit. https://t.co/CHsfQxIOfL pic.twitter.com/lMCryxOzl8
— Eleven Warriors (@11W) August 5, 2020
BiSB: Also, you can imagine OSU throwing ungodly amounts of resources at the problem. Whereas, some schools...
/shrugs towards the east coast
Seth: This is why Ohio State is leading the charge to keep college football amateur. Their players love football so much they're willing to have brain surgery to keep playing this game for free.
Brian: The funny thing, in a Lars Von Trier sense, is that the financial imperatives of the American university system mean a lot of schools are trying to bring students back to campus, which runs diametrically opposed to the financial imperatives of the athlete-industrial complex.
BiSB: I do appreciate the schedule makers making Michigan's new crossover game Northwestern in the middle of November.
Ace: IN THE RIVALRY SLOT!
BIG M00N SATURDAY!
Brian: Michigan-Northwestern is the rivalry game against common sense and causality.
Ace: So you’re saying it’s the perfect capper to this season’s hypothetical schedule.
Seth: But it does affect the preseason YDPYSOS.
Brian: The perfect season is that COVID cancels every game except Michigan-Northwestern on rivalry week.
Wait no we have to hamblast MSU as well.
Ace: Exposing the team to State students? Sir…
Seth: Michigan State only agreed to the swap-back because there wouldn't be a game in Ann Arbor this year. This would constitute an unconscionable bait and switch.
BiSB: I return to this, though: for a schedule built around the idea that the season might go off the rails at any time, Week 1 kinda sucks.
Ace: They seemed to make an active effort to try not to be too obvious about it. Even though “we moved Michigan-OSU to October” gives up the game.
Seth: Purdue's going to make that a night game and now I'm certain Gene Smith made this schedule and everyone signed off because in a Buckeye's mind what's more terrifying than Rondale Moore?
(Other than paying players. (Legally.))
BiSB: Heck, week 2 is bad too.
Brian: There's a fine line between planning for real and planning for show.
Speaking of planning…
BIG TEN BASKETBALL BUBBLE DO IT
[Marc-Grégor Campredon]
BiSB: How many people are we talking? 30 per school?
Brian: online classes! disintegration of the fiction that these are normal students!
Ace: I mean you have to pay them first.
Brian: inevitable destruction of the poison of amateurism!
Discussing and implementing, as Goodman alludes to, are two different things. Here's Michigan AD Warde Manuel on bubbles back in June:
— Andrew Kahn (@AndrewKahn) August 6, 2020
"We will not isolate our student-athletes and put them in a hotel and keep them there. They're not professionals."
From https://t.co/FfAaPW0onw https://t.co/jE6uJiVCj1
Sure pay em!
Seth:
It's weird this is the front at this time. Like, okay guys, we've still got an ironclad amateurism case if we realign our conferences to capture out-of-region cable markets for our branded channel ventures, but DO NOT cordon them off to protect them from COVID or the jig's up!
— Seth M. Fisher (@Misopogon) August 6, 2020
Ace: Michigan is currently asking football season ticket holders to donate the money if we don’t have a season.
Brian: The fact that they won't do this despite the prospect of making a hell of a lot of money that would otherwise evaporate is infuriating.
Ace: Stephen Ross and Al Glick cover the deficit and fund the bubble challenge.
I should really put “deficit” in scare quotes.
Brian: I mean you can't do it for football, it's not feasible, but 14 basketball teams? You can do that.
Seth: Well, 13.
Ace: If you rule out Rutgers right away, it becomes much more feasible.
Brian: Rutgers is interesting! They have our favorite player in the league!
BiSB: While the "deficit" is largely of their own making, in the short term my guess is that it is very real.
Ace: Let Jacob Young transfer to, oh, to pick a school at random… Michigan State.
Seth: Aaron Henry waits on the bench. I like this.
Ace: This is how Tom Izzo finally crosses a line of no return in the huddle. The Knight Line, if you will.
BiSB: Spittle aaaaaaaaaaall over the face shield!
Brian: If we're cutting teams out of the bubble Northwestern and Nebraska are the obvious answers but also this is a hypothetical thing that will never happen building on a separate hypothetical thing that will never happen and may be slightly too deep in the weeds even for us.
BiSB: Northwestern and Nebraska in their own bubble.
Ace: Only on BTN-Plus.
Brian: The COVID Palace
BiSB: /Big Ten players quietly retract their demand that the league provide their families with BTN+ access.
How many conferences do we think can do a basketball bubble?
Ace: Without giving up the game? Zero.
BiSB: Assume the game has been surrendered.
Brian: To make a somewhat serious point about all this: the NCAA is so dedicated to the baked-in inequality that they're not willing to consider the successful model that allows them to play in these circumstances. They're willing to sacrifice the thing itself as long as they get to sit on top of the ashes.
Ace: Yes. The power conferences could pull this off. There’s zero chance they try to do it the only way we’ve seen it work.
Seth: Quasi-successful. A couple of Marlins snuck out after hours and it canceled two teams. One incident like that and you lose half the season.
Ace: MLB is not the successful model. They did not bubble.
Seth: Fair point.
Ace: They’re the disaster model.
Brian: MLS and the NBA have pulled off bubbles.
Seth: Still: 200 college students over four months.
Ace: Also the NWSL and WNBA.
BiSB: 200 college students in an isolated environment are going to be as virus-free as 200 pros. 200 college students in ANYTHING ELSE will never ever ever work.
Ace: It becomes pretty feasible if college campuses are mostly shut down.
…and they admit that the athletes are employees.
Brian: Or are forced to admit it by the Pac-12 boycott.
BiSB: If college campuses shut down, lots of college kids are still gonna be near campus.
Ace: Not in the dorms, though. My general experience with high-level college athletes is they’re much more likely to adhere to disciplined protocols than the average college student.
Brian: Except Ryan Mallett.
Ace: Fair. You can’t bubble football, but a team of 15 basketball players when you’ve pretty much got a 1:1 staff-to-player ratio? That feels manageable.
BiSB: They've still got to travel and get food and etc. and etc.
Ace: That’s the bit where it gets tricky. Pro bubbles don’t require travel.
BiSB: Yep. And bubbles mean that if one team has to quarantine for a couple of weeks, they can rearrange stuff. You can't say "Oops, Rutgers exploded again, let's make Purdue the game tomorrow."
Brian: I was assuming this was a full on pro bubble at the United Center or something.
BiSB: An island, I assume... but which one? Mackinac Island. Play in the ballroom at the Grand.
Ace: Go full UFC, Hoops Island outside of, like, Guam.
The Mathlete: I hear there's a good court in the Bahamas.
Wet floors are more fun! [via atlantisbahamas.com]
Brian: Hell yes the 2020 trophy is the trident.
BiSB: Yeah. 2020 needs more curses.
Seth: You can fit the whole league in a hotel. My thing is what's the compliance number you need for a high chance of success? Say 95% of players comply, one guy gets the disease, ten days later he's shedding into the hotel's HVAC system.
Brian: No air conditioning.
Everyone gets little bags of oxygen.
All food served at 212 degrees.
if it cools off even a little they take it away.
All so i can have a TV show.
BiSB: Where's Ja Rule? He can organize this.
Brian: WHERE IS JA
Dave Chappelle is the best. I have nothing else to add.
So many words / bytes about so much that might not happen — and I'm grateful for every bytty word.
So much that won’t happen after October 1
I hope i'm wrong, but RE: the BigTen football schedule, I suspect the two scheduled "bye" weeks will eventually morph into several 'buh-bye' weeks/games...and ultimately buh-bye to the '20 fall season
3 takeaways here:
1. I did not know about Justin Fields and Shaun Wade saying they wouldn't sit out. Nothing bad ever happens to Ohio State
2. If they could pull off a CFB bubble and don't, that would be annoying. Again, that's just me being selfish, though.
3. Great Chappelle reference!
Why would OSU players take the pay cut just to prep for the draft?
Here's an optimist's case for college football.
With many things that have returned, there's been a period of bad/worry/panic, followed by a period of correction or smoothing, followed by a full or near-full return.
Meatpacking plants: panic, workers claiming the companies didn't care about them, infections, shutdowns; it looked for all the world like they couldn't and wouldn't be able to open. I bought meat and put it in the freezer. But they either corrected things or the virus is going to virus worked in our favor, or whatever happened, it got worked out and most are operating.
Auto plants: very similar, several of the Big 3 had infections, positive tests, and shifts walking out. Did not seem like it was going to happen. It's happening just fine now (yes, a breakout could happen at any time and take a plant down). You're talking about thousands of people at these sites.
MLB: some significant issues, everyone said they screwed it up, should have had a bubble, won't work, season's going to be cancelled; the Marlins played yesterday. Yes the league is at risk and it could end with outbreaks. But they've worked through it and are playing on.
College football itself: MSU resumed practice yesterday. Yes again it's understood that another break out can happen and end it. But they've resumed as of now.
This extends to larger society as well - things have generally opened, had hiccups, and then went on. Yes there have been a large amount of infections in this second wave or continuation of the first wave (or whatever it's being called). It seems cases are cresting and headed down in many of the hotspots.
Yes I know football is different than several of the things I note above. And there will be infections. And it could be lost at any moment. But I still think there's a chance it comes off. The B1G schedule is pretty smart, allowing it a chance - Kevin Warren deserves credit for that. We'll see how it goes.
In some cases you're right but in some cases the news cycle moved on. If the Big10 proceeds with this schedule there will be at least some games cancelled and there may be players that opt out in the middle of the season if they don't feel as if they are being protected. It's going to be messy. If the university, players, and Big10 are okay we messy and at times bad press then yes, I could see the season completing in some fashion.
I think you're right, messy is going to be the rule for a little while. But it was really, really messy with the meatpacking plants. The auto plants had a lot of bad press around here as well. Both may have had a wider reach than the audience of college football. And I think you already have 1 data point of the news cycle moving on in CFB, the Feeney case. Now if there are a few more Feeney cases, that's going to be it. But that should be an outlier based on the data.
The other big issue is the studies on long term effects. If those prove more and more valid, it will end. But of course we'll go back on lockdown nationally if that's the case (and we should).
I'm so glad to finally see some common sense on this blog. I've been stalking for years, and it's been damn depressing watching what's happened to you folks the last 5 months.
August 6th, 2020 at 10:21 PM ^
All of this is true, but what keeps being ignored is that these outbreaks slow down only when somewhat-drastic measures are taken and people are sort of forced to follow them. Those meat-packing plants had to change how they interact with each other by erecting some protective shields, changed shifts to limit exposure, and perform a fair bit of on-site testing. Same with the auto plants, where you have to fill out an app every day (as well as get temperature checks) before entering a building. And the MLB can "play through it" because these are millionaire players who agreed to do it, not college athletes who (as we've seen) seem to believe their interests may not be at the forefront with all programs.
And the states that are now coming down somewhat from being hotspots were oftentimes the ones that seemed to have "dodged" the first wave (and in Florida's case crowed about it). Even CA, where measures were initially pretty successful and many credited with being so proactive), then were hit when people became somewhat more lax in their behavior. So saying "look at what X did and didn't catch a case, it must work" feels somewhat premature because, as we've seen a couple of times now, it's hard to tell how much of the protection is actually the result of your actions and how much is just "luck".
The Big 10 has a plan, and it may very well work. But none of these campuses have many, if any, students on them. As a country we're still pretty bottled up, and we've seen upticks in states like Michigan after they hit lows because people started mixing more and relaxing social distancing practices (like wearing masks in public areas). I honestly don't know how college campuses will look in the fall, but if it's true that at least some chunk of students will be back (as UM seems to be assuming), that gives you more points for infection, more interactions, more mixing. And if guys are then also having to travel to spots, that opens up even more vectors for transmission. The bubble works because, as it says on the box, it's a bubble, with restricted movement in and out. That won't happen with football.
I feel like this is just repeating what's been said a bunch of times, but there are over 160k dead because of COVID-19. Relatively few of them are young, and while there are undoubtedly going to be some percentage of survivors who suffer long-term health repercussions, I'll accept that most will be fine. But this constant drumbeat that insinuates anyone who worries about this stuff isn't employing common sense or seeing the forest from the trees is getting a little old.
But this constant drumbeat that insinuates anyone who worries about this stuff isn't employing common sense or seeing the forest from the trees is getting a little old.
I don't think the post you are replying to in any way insinuating what you say it is. It pretty clearly presents as an optimists case, and acknowledges that it could fall apart at any time.
I think the season has about a 50/50 chance of being completed in some form, with a relatively satisfactory B1G and possibly national champion. I wouldn't bet money either way. I think anyone who says it's more than 80% likely to either happen or not happen is way too confident in themselves (and if they want to give me 4-1 odds on either outcome I'll take it). But no one argues the middle, everyone just stakes out an extreme side and laughs at those on the other side. That's probably a bias humans have against uncertain events, or a selection bias in who comments on blog posts - only those with the most confidence will speak, and those in the middle like me don't think it's worth the hassle to sit on the fence.
I think the drumbeat that "LOL this is all a waste of time nobody is gonna play" is equally tiring as the one you mention. There are obvious incentives to make it happen and they wouldn't be going through all this trouble if they didn't want to go ahead with it. Maybe their luck will be good, maybe it will be bad, but at this point we are all just guessing.
Isn't it bad that Michigan-MSU switched though?
Best case, they actually play this year but it's with no fans and hence doesn't matter much. Worst case (highly likely IMO), the game/season doesn't happen.
And then Michigan has to go to EL in 2021 when they otherwise would have hosted in 2021. So this is more like switching it ahead of next year in MSU's favor....again.
OTOH, Michigan likely won't have to play in front of OSU fans for a large gap (2018-2022). Although PSU gets to say that about playing in front of Michigan fans.
Michigan needed to get this fixed. The original plan was to fuck Michigan doubly by giving MSU two home games in a row and taking away Michigan's even year schedule anchor. MSU wasn't going to agree to play two years a row in Ann Arbor, it was too unfair to make Michigan play on the road twice again to repair it, and Michigan is fighting uphill for everything at the Big Ten because of the current dynamics there. So this was the way to compromise between what's right and MSU's need to not get fucked like they fucked Dave Brandon.
I mean, yes, long term I suppose it was good to get MSU and OSU home games on different years for their ability to sell season tickets with a rivalry game each year. But from a competitive standpoint, it's worse than just keeping it the way it was because Michigan is going to effectively lose a home game this way.
Although, I'm going to go ahead and say I'll be surprised if MSU comes close in any of the next 5 games against M, maybe more.
The competitive situation probably won’t matter. MSU seems to have returned to mediocrity and hasn’t even beaten us in East Lansing since Hoke was our coach.
But it matters a lot when you’re trying to sell season tickets in even-numbered years. (And for MSU, odd-numbered years.)
The long term value of the switch is worth the short term problem you mention.
Also, note that the Indiana game has a corresponding switch. So now Indiana is the division road game in even years along with Rutger and OSU, while MSU, Maryland and PSU are at home. Over the long term I think MSU is likely to be better than Indiana on average, so I think the trade works out in our favor from a competitive standpoint, not just for ticket sale reasons.
Come on Smarch Threeveth!
The bubble is not going to work for 400 men aged 18-22. How many of you would like to go 4 months without a significant other?
Speaking to when you were that age. I'm sure some guys would be happy to be away for 4 months.
While Michigan has a tough schedule because they play Minnesota and Wisconson, it looks like this guy projects PSU to beat Michigan, or at least for PSU to go and expected 1-1 against OSU and Michigan and I doubt that happens.
Ace speaking THE TRUTH:
"Only on BTN-Plus"
Exactly what BTN would do to us!
who is the goofball saying Sparty will win 5 games? Rutgers at home is the only likely win...
just saying... All the Euro soccer leagues, except the French, returned to finish their seasons with little or no issues.
And their big tournament resumes tonight
They found a way to play and be safe
Difference is European countries has significantly less cases than USA. It's easier to have that with minor issues as opposed to USA where we have issues across the board.
Places like Italy and Spain, where I live, had terrible outbreaks but they brought it under control and reintroduced sports. And it has worked. Just saying, that it can work. And I'd like to think we Americans have as much social discipline as the Italians. God Bless them
they're willing to have brain surgery to keep playing this game for free. Missed the scare quotes around "free", Seth.
August 7th, 2020 at 12:39 PM ^
Minnesota Football will do better than 6-4
You guys are all depressing as shit when it comes to having a season. Are you all that miserable? In the middle of a pandemic, the Big Ten coming out with a schedule and hoping to play a full season brings relief. These schools arent dumb enough to put these kids at risk. If theres an outbreak theyll cancel the season. Every single writer on this blog is so depressing and its getting old. "So theres a schedule" "They're I guess going to try to have a season" "This will never work" okay Fauci's.
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