Kirk Herbstreit Casts Serious Doubt on 2020 College Football Season
Please don't shoot the messenger!
Let's hope for reasons that go way beyond our mutual love of sports that either a vaccine can get fast-tracked or that we find a drug(s) that is successful treating COVID-19.
Per Herbie, he doubts we will have college or pro football next season.
"I'll be shocked if we have NFL football this fall, if we have college football. I'll be so surprised if that happens. Just because from what I understand, people that I listen to, you're 12 to 18 months from a [coronavirus] vaccine. I don't know how you let these guys go into locker rooms and let stadiums be filled up and how you can play ball. I just don't know how you can do it with the optics of it."
https://www.si.com/college/georgia/news/kirk-herbstreit-casts-doubt-on-college-football-season
March 28th, 2020 at 10:20 AM ^
Yeah, well, that's just like his opinion, man.
March 28th, 2020 at 11:24 AM ^
Michigan head coach Les Miles and D-coordinator Jon Tenuta agree with this sentiment.
March 28th, 2020 at 12:57 PM ^
When did Les get the Michigan job? I must’ve missed that.
Rats. You beat me to the punch. +1 for you.
March 28th, 2020 at 12:59 PM ^
Wait, what happened now? I must be overachieving with my social distancing.
Sorry, I assumed even the younger readers of MGoBlog probably heard of this 2007 fiasco. Gather round, young 'uns, and let me spin this tale. We got plenty of time these days.
After Lloyd Carr's resignation announcement and the conclusion of the 2007 regular season (the one that started with The Horror and didn't get much better until the bowl game vs. Florida), on the same day Miles' LSU team was preparing to play the SEC championship (they would go on to win the National Championship), Herbie reported that Les Miles had accepted the Michigan job and would be bringing then-highly sought after Georgia Tech DC/interim HC Jon Tenuta with him to Ann Arbor.
Miles had a press conference that afternoon to put the kibosh on it and at the end of the season, while rumors were still rampant he was going to go to Michigan, he signed an extension with LSU. There was plenty of backlash against Herbie, obviously. He was interviewed on Detroit WDFN a few days later (LINK):
" I leave it to the professionals to break stories, guys like you and the media that are a little bit more comfortable in that role.
"I would much rather talk about what teams are doing on the field. One thing I can assure you, you will never see me gathering news and reporting information ever again."
"By the time Friday came around, I had some information that - trust me on this - was very accurate, based on not a source, but someone that was going to be involved in the situation. I made the mistake, I guess, telling the ESPN bosses. They are journalists and they said, 'you've got an obligation to talk about that and go with it.'
There were rumors at the time that someone claiming to be Desmond Howard had called Herbie and fed him the wrong information, along with conspiracy theories about LSU's opponents trying to mess with their heads feeding the report to Herbie, or even that Herbie himself was trying to sink Miles' chances at the UM job by putting it out there prematurely. But recall that Desmond was a colleague of Herbie's at the time. Years later, he had this to say about it: (LINK)
I was in Hawaii doing ESPN, so I had no knowledge of anything. I put the (earpiece) in my ear, and I'm hearing Herbstreit break this news, and I'm thinking, "You know, things happen overnight, maybe it did." He's a seemingly intelligent guy, so if he's going to say it, I don't think he's going to go out there and blurt it out. He must have believed what he said. Whether it was true or false, there's no doubt in my mind that Herbstreit believed what he was saying on TV.
Now, should he have dug deeper? Should ESPN have dug deeper? Of course. They have a Michigan guy on their crew and they knew how to get in contact with me, but no one ever called me.
LOL @ "seemingly."
Long story longer, Miles, for his part, really wanted the job. According to John Bacon's telling in Three and Out, as I remember it, AD Bill Martin was on a boat and deliberately not taking calls for a few days when Miles was desperately trying to figure out if he should sign with LSU or if the Michigan offer was coming.
“I love Michigan, we just didn’t have the opportunity [to be the head coach]. It does break my heart. I love the place. There were things I was fortunate to accomplish that I only give credit to Michigan for the experiences I had that allowed me to do some of things I did. I thank the time I was there and how much I enjoyed being around the Michigan players and Coach (Bo) Schembechler."
So anyways, we end up hiring RichRod, the Michigan administration and fanbase totally unified behind him, and we rode his spread attack to multiple B1G championships. Or something, I don't remember, I was blackout drunk from 2008-2010.
I am way older than I care to admit and lived every second of that fiasco in living color. And still your comment flew over my head like a Nolan Ryan fastball, I am embarrassed to admit.
Game, set, match, and a tip of the cap (no handshake, of course) to you!
Glad to see Trump is reaching out to experts now.
I mean WTF?
Do we have to? On every thread now?
Unfortunately yes we do. There are people who have a personal hate for Trump and will go out of their way to blame him or cast him in a bad light. SAD !
Gee, why would anyone possibly hate him? He's so smart, kind, and level-headed.
Which should have little to do with why anyone likes or dislikes anyone.
You forgot he’s very modest too
I haven’t verified for sure, but I don’t think he’s been mentioned on any of the other 6 threads on the board. But this Alex Rodriguez news probably increases the odds it comes up on the “Are you missing sports right now thread”. That thread may in fact explain why he is coming up so much. It appears many people hanging out and commenting on a sports blog are in fact not missing sports.
People hated Obama
People hated Bush
People hated Clinton
See a trend here? When you’re the head of a government there are going to be disgruntled and cynical people blaming that person for their problems. People hating Trump for not being modest are just as bad as those who hated Obama for being a Kenyan nationalist ????
I wish people focused on policy and not if you like an individual. I would much rather go out to dinner or have a drink with Obama. But politics wise, Trump is so much better.
I actually think it is worth focusing on:
policy
morals
temperament
and intelligence
just to name a few factors that I focus on instead of, who I’d like to have a drink with.
Trump doesn’t fare well on any of them.
March 28th, 2020 at 10:57 PM ^
Morals ? Anyone who is ok with the genocide of the unborn isn’t ok morally in my book. It’s like saying “oh yeah Hitler has really done a lot for the workers of Germany. We actually have nice vacations now. I’ll look past the resulting murder of millions”.
March 28th, 2020 at 10:20 AM ^
I think we should all get used to the idea of 2020 being cancelled
March 28th, 2020 at 10:30 AM ^
I agree. An abundance of caution makes sense.
Also, the players won’t be ready at this point.
March 28th, 2020 at 11:38 AM ^
Selfishly, I'd rather watch a bunch of unready kids play football than nothing at all...
March 28th, 2020 at 12:23 PM ^
Until your favorite player tears his ACL and can’t play anymore.
March 28th, 2020 at 10:47 AM ^
This thing is going to likely be around seasonally (from news I have read) like the Flu and although the numbers are slightly higher right now than the flu in deaths in the US it's not the end of the world and not a "The Plague" like event that the media and others acting like. The majority are getting flu like symptoms and recovering just fine. I really think once summer hits this will die down. I can only hope.
March 28th, 2020 at 10:58 AM ^
Thanks Doc
I need to make an appointment to get my colon looked at
Think you could squeeze me in when you're not too busy studying Covid-19?
Its amazing how anything posted on here that's not doom and gloom gets negative votes likes crazy. Disappointing that most of the people reading this blog are sheep who blindly believe the sensationalism of the media like the majority of society right now. Obviously this thing is serious, but how does it help to act like the world is ending 24/7. This is what you're getting as a byproduct of all the shut downs and governors trying to make people stay in their homes like zoo animals. People are miserable because of the constant fear machine of the media and now people do not have things to enjoy to relieve stress.
You don’t need to “blindly believe the sensationalism of the media” to be very concerned. The first hand accounts of medical personnel around the world and the epidemiologists studying it should be more than sufficient.
Even scarier than the virus itself is the total incompetence of the federal government’s response. Testing, preparation and education should have ramped up two months ago when all the warning signs were there. Still no hint of a strategy or coordinated national response. It’s shameful.
Thanks Go Blue ..... I am used to it (the negs on this site) and have achieved epic levels of thumbs down on that reply. I choose to be optimistic and not act like death is at my doorstep.
March 28th, 2020 at 11:05 AM ^
C'mon dude. At this point, I don't know how anyone can insinuate that this is just slightly worse than the flu. Many of the major Detroit hospitals will not let anyone in the door at this point, because there are no beds left. And we are just at the start here. Just think about that. Have you ever heard of anything like that with the flu?
Here's a survey of a bunch of public health experts, and their average death projection for 2020 is almost 250,000. 250,000! About 290,000 Americans died in all of World War II, if that helps your perspective.
Whatever you think about the media is fine, but no rational person thinks this is a "bad flu" anymore.
March 28th, 2020 at 12:46 PM ^
675,000 people were killed in the US from Spanish flu. Nothing was shut down or changed.
I'm not advocating that now, just commenting on the differing attitudes 100 years later.
You should maybe read up on the Spanish flu a bit.
“Philadelphia’s response was too little, too late. Dr. Wilmer Krusen, director of Public Health and Charities for the city, insisted mounting fatalities were not the “Spanish flu,” but rather just the normal flu. So on September 18, the city went forward with a Liberty Loan parade attended by tens of thousands of Philadelphians, spreading the disease like wildfire. In just 10 days, over 1,000 Philadelphians were dead, with another 200,000 sick. Only then did the city close saloons and theaters. By March 1919, over 15,000 citizens of Philadelphia had lost their lives.
St. Louis, Missouri, was different: Schools and movie theaters closed and public gatherings were banned. Consequently, the peak mortality rate in St. Louis was just one-eighth of Philadelphia’s death rate during the peak of the pandemic.”
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic
Sorry, I didn't mean to make a blanket statement. In general I think it was accurate, despite individual measures that of course did occur. In sports terms, all sports continued with no shutdowns and vernally there was no widespread shutdowns of any industry. Again, not advocating that for this time, we should all be shutdown for a while
Thanks for the response. From the same article I cited above:
‘The flu was also detrimental to the economy. In the United States, businesses were forced to shut down because so many employees were sick. Basic services such as mail delivery and garbage collection were hindered due to flu-stricken workers.
In some places there weren’t enough farm workers to harvest crops. Even state and local health departments closed for business, hampering efforts to chronicle the spread of the 1918 flu and provide the public with answers about it.”
we may very well have ended up in the same place if we just let nature take it’s course.
Yes but they weren't shut down forcefully, that is far different. We are shutting down the entire economy on purpose. That may be well be necessary. But IMO the point stands, (which was my only point, I'm not trying to take sides) 100 years ago people were far more laissez faire about these things.
If you check, UM football played a shortened season in 1918. About 5 games, mid-season, were canceled due to the virus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_Michigan_Wolverines_football_team
Check your history. Many states and localities imposed rules for social distancing. Places that imposed those rules had significantly better outcomes.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/24/21188121/coronavirus-covid-19-social-distancing-1918-spanish-flu
A more accurate comparison would be the 2009 Swine Flu (a strain of Spanish Flu) pandemic. Over the course of a year, 60 million Americans contracted it with over 270,000 hospitalizations and over 12,000 deaths. Worldwide there were somewhere between 150,000 and 575,000 deaths from it. All this comes from the official CDC site.
We averaged 22,000 hospitalizations a month with Swine Flu and with coronavirus the hospitalization rate is about 8% to 10% of the 100,000+ that have contracted it. So far, we're hospitalizing about less than half of what we did in 2009.
It was very under reported at the time and stay at home orders and business shutdowns did not happen. It does make me wonder what we don't know about coronavirus since the numbers for it are nowhere near the pace of Swine Flu. Either we dropped the ball then and should have reacted like we are now, or there's something about this we don't know in the general public.
Look st NY and see why people are worried.
The numbers have gone up each day. On Friday, the number of hospitalizations broke 1,000. On Monday, 2,000. On Tuesday, 3000. And on Thursday, there were 5,327 people hospitalized in New York state, of which 1,290 were in intensive care units.
also, bot sure what the average hospitalization time was for swine flu, but if it was a week, that would mean 5000 a week. New York has already surpassed that. If it was two weeks, it would equal your numbers. There is almost no one out there who thinks we’ve reached the peak.
Numbers don’t mean anything to these idiots.
They’ve been downplaying it since there were “15 cases going down to zero” and they’re going to ride that horse to the bitter end.
And, as usual, the virus doesn’t care what people want us believe.
80,000 Americans died of the flu in 2018. If there are only 250,000 fatalities in the US from this, we should be relieved. Also, it is interesting that numerous studies are indicating that: 1. The vast majority of people who have the virus don’t even know it as they have no symptoms; 2. Many, many more people have already had and recovered from the virus than initially though. The current fatality rate if 1.67 percent — while low — is likely massively overstating the real fatality rate as we are only testing very sick people who have symptoms and are seeking medical treatment. Once testing becomes more available to the general population it is likely that the fatality rate is really, really low — like in the .005 percent range.
I hope you're right, but I haven't seen anyone reputable saying a .005% death rate is feasible. It's true we don't know the true number of people infected, but we also don't know the true number of deaths from the currently infected, because they're not dead yet. I suspect we'll end up somewhere around 1% by the end, but that's still really significant -- about 10 times higher than the flu death rate.
The other significant thing is that the hospitalization rate is really high, like 20%. That's what the real issue is right now.
20 percent of confirmed cases. Recent studies say 50-75 percent of people that have it will never know it or have such mild conditions that it is similar to a cold. The fatality rate on confirmed cases is painting a very incomplete picture.
How do you reconcile that with what we are seeing in New York, Italy and Spain? We don’t have to look very hard to see that this is hitting many areas harder than a traditional flu season.
A large percentage of the infected in Italy are old. In fact, the median age of death in Italy is over 80 years old and Italy has not been giving respiratory to anyone over 80 — and now age 60 on account of the high number of cases. Contrast that with the fatality rate in Germany which is low largely because those that are sick are much younger. The already know for certain that the US will not be anything like Italy. We currently have a fatality rate of 1.67 percent of CONFIRMED cases. So 1.5 out of out of 100 people who are showing symptoms and are seeking medical attention die in the United States. This is, of course, horrible but this is not a representative sample of the population.
A large percentage of the infected in Italy are old. In fact, the median age of death in Italy is over 80 years old and Italy has not been giving respiratory to anyone over 80 — and now age 60 on account of the high number of cases. Contrast that with the fatality rate in Germany which is low largely because those that are sick are much younger. The already know for certain that the US will not be anything like Italy. We currently have a fatality rate of 1.67 percent of CONFIRMED cases. So 1.5 out of out of 100 people who are showing symptoms and are seeking medical attention die in the United States. This is, of course, horrible but this is not a representative sample of the population.
How dare you write facts and have common sense to this argument. =)
Not to mention Italy has a high smoking rate which doesn't help if you have respiratory complications.
March 28th, 2020 at 10:16 PM ^
80k people did not die from the flu in 2018. Well maybe since the CDC extrapolates from a sample that is about 10% of those actually infected. Their range for that year is 45k-85k. That 80k number was from an early estimate in the beginning of 2019. It has since been revised as it is a three year process and any number now is a preliminary estimate. The CDC estimates 61k people died from the flu during the 2017/2018 season. It was one of the most fatal seasons in recent history because that years vaccine was only about 30% effective.
Because I look at the numbers and see "who" is passing away for the most part (when it's listed) and it typically is elderly, immune compromised or other health issues that cause them to pass. I also look at when people recover what was it like and it seems pretty clearly it's very much LIKE the flu which is also a virus that can lead to Pneumonia and other complications which cause more issues for patients. The media is totally "ON" this and going way overboard with things like .... "The death rate has just soared past 80 deaths". Soared? Give me a break. I agree this is nothing to fool around with but neither is the flu that infects millions and kills tens of thousands. You have people flocking to the ERs when they have other illnesses THINKING they have the Corona virus because they are freaked out because the media is acting like this is an extinction event.
As far as those numbers you mentioned; The Swine Flu in the first year infected up to 1.4B and killed over 500K world wide and we didn't freak out and shut down the country.
You have your opinion and I am good with that. I simply am looking at this differently. This board has always been full of negativity and people who "freak out". =)
March 28th, 2020 at 11:14 AM ^
1% of flu patients need to be hospitalized. Current estimates are that 20-30% of COVID-19 patients need to be hospitalized.
It is summer in Australia right now, that is how hemispheres work. COVID-19 is spreading in Australia on about the same exponential curve as other countries.
This is not a seasonal illness and it is not the flu.
March 28th, 2020 at 11:46 AM ^
This is correct. In somewhat good news, it does seem as though rates of infection per million people (and also deaths) in Australia are less than most countries in the northern hemisphere. That may be due to the warmer, moister air of summer, but there's not enough data to make a conclusion either way.
Or it might just be sunlight/ultraviolet radiation.