B1G Season Not Yet Cancelled?
Nicole Auerbach & Wolverine Wire are reporting that no vote has taken place yet. I’m not going to get my hopes up though.
I’m so confused. Conflicting reports everywhere. Personally, I’m not sure why this decision has to be made now when they can push back the season a bit and buy themselves some more time. Also, it makes no sense from a risk standpoint that you could bring students back to campus and assume that risk but playing football on campus is too big of a risk. Thats like being worried about your windows being broke out during an earthquake. If you can have students and classes on campus you should be able to play. If you decide no students on campus then cancel the season. Seems pretty straightforward in that regard.
August 10th, 2020 at 3:10 PM ^
"Let’s let money dictate Health decisions"
I've got bad news for you about big-time athletics, and more generally, the US health care system...
August 10th, 2020 at 1:58 PM ^
LORT.
August 10th, 2020 at 2:05 PM ^
There's a big split in allowing students back to campus. For example, MSU is asking them to stay away and Michigan is not. This would be any easier decision if that wasn't the case.
August 10th, 2020 at 2:06 PM ^
They’re floating trial balloons to soften the blow when it actually comes. The official announcement is inevitable.
August 10th, 2020 at 2:23 PM ^
not "YET"
August 10th, 2020 at 2:23 PM ^
The players are going to be in more danger of catching and spreading COVID now, since there is no season that would have had strict testing and health monitoring.
August 10th, 2020 at 2:46 PM ^
All of my Michigan classes are online and I venture to say a lot of their classes are too
Being home and not at school will lower their risk for the virus when compared to traveling across the country every week, coming into contact with new people every step of the way
August 10th, 2020 at 4:15 PM ^
Except when they have free time to party on the weekends, and please don't tell me that most college students will not have big parties on the weekends, which is more dangerous then playing football on Saturdays.
August 10th, 2020 at 7:10 PM ^
There’s also the inherent responsibility of doing your best to NOT test positive if you want to play, which would hopefully quell any desire to attend such a party/gathering if there was a season. Without a season, all bets are off. There’s no mandatory testing, no consequences of not playing.
August 10th, 2020 at 2:24 PM ^
You are 100% correct.
August 10th, 2020 at 2:24 PM ^
— TexAgs (@TexAgs) August 10, 2020
August 10th, 2020 at 2:25 PM ^
If there is a hangup in making things official, it's in getting the other conferences to go along. Even if there is agreement about not playing this fall, they still need to agree about the prospect of playing the season in the Spring or Winter.
I won't be surprised if the other conferences prefer to see the public reaction to the Big Ten and PAC-12's announcement before making a final decision.
August 10th, 2020 at 2:31 PM ^
The GMAC (DII conference for the University where I work) has postponed Football, Men's and Women's Soccer, and Volleyball until the Spring.
I don't know if our old conference, the GLIAC (Grand Valley, Ferris, SVSU etc) has made a decision yet.
August 10th, 2020 at 2:41 PM ^
Death rate is way under 1%. Play ball ...
August 10th, 2020 at 2:42 PM ^
Why don't we create a super conference of willing participant teams? Maybe a mix of 25 or 30 teams from the P5 conferences. Draw up the big money TV contracts and profit share across all conferences. Set some of that money aside for the guys that are playing this season. Scheduling would be a bitch but Michigan vs UGA in week X or OSU vs Clemson in week Y would be quite a draw.
Plans for something like this to happen should've been created a couple months ago. Probably too late.
August 10th, 2020 at 2:48 PM ^
According to reports yesterday, the presidents haven't even discussed what to do if the season doesn't happen
What have they possibly been doing since March. Incompetence and lack of preparedness from the higher ups all the way down to the individuals who don't wear masks or practice social distancing
August 10th, 2020 at 3:18 PM ^
Each player already has the ability to decide not to play if he feels it isn't best for him.
I would like to see the season proceed and each player also have the ability to decide to play if he feels it is best for him.
I feel that the player is the best person to decide such things for his own situation.
There are people who put the risk of SARS-2 as being very high and severe. There are people who put that risk as being lower than the detriment of missing a season of football, which for them might be vital to career path. Neither decision is wrong -- it depends on the situation of the person.
I need to make decisions like that. Isolation minimizes my children's risk of getting SARS-2. Isolation also (in my view) has significant problems for social development and their emotional well being. I have to decide where on that spectrum to operate.
It is a risk-weighted decision that takes into account a lot of personal factors and judgements.
But I get to decide those things for my situation.
I think players should get to do likewise.
August 10th, 2020 at 3:21 PM ^
You're conflating the organization forcing people to come back so the organization can be paid money by those people, with the organization asking people to come back so the organization get money from the free labor those people are providing.
If the organizations just faced the hard truth that college football and basketball players are minor league players masquerading as students and just paid the players, this would be no problem. They'd put the players in a bubble and have a season.
But, to perpetuate the fraud that is college athletes not being paid for their labor, then we have to keep pretending they're not employees, and walk this awkward line of regulating them but not so much that it looks like we'r regulating employees.
Just let them be employees like other minor leagues.
August 10th, 2020 at 3:44 PM ^
Look guys. They have to cancel. Public universities aren’t taking the chance of being sued into oblivion the first time a kid dies, or there’s an outbreak on a team.
August 10th, 2020 at 8:09 PM ^
It's much more likely that a student athlete would suffer a serious medical issue from playing football than from Covid yet university presidents don't cancel all sports due to the risk from playing football.
August 10th, 2020 at 4:07 PM ^
Arguing lawsuits is a financial argument.
Then, you have to factor in the financial aspects of both sides. Having a season might risk more lawsuits, but it for sure would result in $75-$100M of less revenue in that year alone plus more losses in following years. There could also be lawsuit risk related to not having a season.
I suspect that having a season would be better financially than not having a season.
August 10th, 2020 at 4:33 PM ^
It's a new day, a new reality. The corona is not going anywhere. The vaccine at 50% efficacy and max. 40% people taking it, will not suddenly solve all our problems. The players want to play, it is safer to have them on campus in a bubble, most of the Coaching community want to play.
You don't run from problems, you face them head-on, improvise, adapt, overcome!!
Remember folks, 0.04% infection fatality rate for ppl under 70 (less than or equal to the season flu).
Athletes are 33X more likely to die in a car wreck than from covid. Should we not ban them from driving first ?!
August 10th, 2020 at 4:41 PM ^
The NHL has been pretty impressive.
August 10th, 2020 at 5:14 PM ^
It's over man.
August 10th, 2020 at 7:52 PM ^
Get him a body bag!
August 10th, 2020 at 6:37 PM ^
University Of Tennessee is playing. No sissy boys in the SEC.
August 10th, 2020 at 8:04 PM ^
Notre Dame reporting that 99.7% of their students tested negative for Covid upon return to campus. Maybe kids can go back to school.
The University, in concert with LabCorp, conducted nearly 12,000 pre-matriculation COVID-19 tests of students before the start of classes on campus today, with less than one-third of 1 percent testing positive:https://t.co/jnzL83td4G
— Notre Dame (@NotreDame) August 10, 2020
August 10th, 2020 at 8:17 PM ^
OSU is not ready to shut it down...
Ohio State coach Ryan Day was just asked on ESPN about playing in another conference if the Big Ten shuts down: "We need to look at every option. And if that's the only option, we need to explore it and see if that's something we can do."
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) August 10, 2020
?
Report: Ohio State president won’t vote to cancel the fall football season: https://t.co/LKu7AEmB78
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 10, 2020
August 10th, 2020 at 8:23 PM ^
I support Aidan, not only as his father but as an ER doc who has lived through some of the worst Covid in the country. I support them playing as the protocols at the University of Michigan have proven to work. I feel my son is in the safest program and conference in the country.
— Chris Hutchinson (@chutch97) August 10, 2020
August 10th, 2020 at 10:02 PM ^
If Biden wins the election, everything will open up and we may have college football as early as mid November. If Trump wins, college sports will be shutdown for a couple more years.