FauxMo

August 26th, 2020 at 11:31 AM ^

They aren't concerned about just one player, but rather the whole team. For the strength of the team is the player, and the strength of the player is the team. 

Joined: 06/17/2010

MGoPoints: 137585

Mongo

August 26th, 2020 at 11:43 AM ^

Those teams that play into October risk losing elite, key players to damaged lungs, heart issues and even death ?  The SEC is rolling the dice with these kids futures. They just don't know it yet.

Joined: 06/25/2016

MGoPoints: 9585

A Lot of Milk

August 26th, 2020 at 3:47 PM ^

The elite programs don't care. Bama knows they had Tua for three years as a rental. Might as well run him into the ground while they still can. Some sports site did an article years ago about how bama basically ruins kids' bodies by the time they make it to the NFL. They've had a pretty good string of pros recently that's probably helped quiet the noise

Joined: 02/17/2013

MGoPoints: 48609

evenyoubrutus

August 26th, 2020 at 12:34 PM ^

Yep. This is exactly what has rubbed me the wrong way since the cancelation was announced. You're canceling sports that are in a controlled environment where you can most likely take measures to protect the players and personnel, but you're okay allowing college kids to congregate without any supervision or control, where they will inevitably party and eat asses and do all the other social type things that college kids tend to do.

Joined: 11/04/2008

MGoPoints: 178243

bacon1431

August 26th, 2020 at 12:55 PM ^

Pretty sure it was about keeping the money flowing. If I was a student, I would rather take online classes through my community college or a cheaper commuter school than a place like UofM (assuming my place at UofM would be guaranteed in the future). School’s are afraid of losing jobs and money. Which I get. But it’s wrong of them to get students to campus and then shut down, which will surely happen everywhere. 

It’s rotten. But I am not surprised. 

Joined: 07/26/2008

MGoPoints: 25285

crg

August 26th, 2020 at 1:13 PM ^

That's a bit disingenuous.  The contact sports are a partially controlled environment... aside from the inevitable interaction with dozens (at least) of individuals from other schools and various persons encountered during team travel.

Classrooms are dorms are also partially controlled environments, in as much as the university can regulate behavior.

The university cannot regulate what people do outside of these environments - and we have all seen the reports of both regular students and student athletes behaving recklessly and spreading the virus.

However, 1) classrooms do not put the additional strain on potentially compromised bodies as contact sports do and 2) the purpose of a university is academic education, not athletic competition - the latter is a luxury while the former is required.  If schools have allowed the major sports to have such undue influence on their budgets, that is something that needs to be rectified.

Joined: 04/30/2015

MGoPoints: 75054

BlueWolverine02

August 26th, 2020 at 2:07 PM ^

But which is the greater threat?  I'd say it's a campus full of students and it's not even close.  Just look at all these outbreaks that are happening after students get back to campus.  Football practice has been going on for a month.

I'm just saying, don't stop football on the pretense of the health of the students and then turn around and open up campus so everybody gets it anyways.  Having students back should have been out of the question if a campus cares about the spread of Covid.  Having football could have been manageable if the campus wasn't full of students.  Sure one is more important to the school than the other, but that one is also impossible to achieve.  Having football is at least debatable.  

And don't take this as an argument that we shouldn't have cancelled football, no need to rehash that.

Joined: 09/20/2014

MGoPoints: 18475

crg

August 26th, 2020 at 2:22 PM ^

I agree with you that it is easier to control/monitor the behavior of a select group of 100-200 students than it is multiple thousands.  However, it is not justifiable as a legitimate education institution to keep a small subset of students performing their group on-campus activities if regular classrooms are not operating as well.

Joined: 04/30/2015

MGoPoints: 75054

crg

August 26th, 2020 at 2:53 PM ^

It's not all or nothing - it is priotization.

If a university cannot conduct its charter-mandated operation (especially when it is state-funded), it raises serious ethical concerns if it proceeds with other functions that are not within that mandate.  This is not a normal company that can just change its business model at any time.

And none of this even mentions the liability aspect (which is certainly a major consideration even if no official wants to publicly acknowledge it).  It is probably much easier to find indemnity in the case or normal students getting covid than it is for student-athletes dealing with covid complications exacerbated by their school-directed athletic activities... although I'm not a lawyer.

Joined: 04/30/2015

MGoPoints: 75054

BlueWolverine02

August 26th, 2020 at 3:07 PM ^

So is keeping the students safe not a priority?  Is that not their stated reason for not having football?  It seems unconscionable that school officials deem it ok to have kids on campus when they deem it too high of a risk to have football.  The whole thing screams of hypocrisy.

And a university can still conduct classes, obviously many are doing it online right now.  

I'm not saying (in this argument at least) that we should have football, i'm saying full campuses is by far the greater risk.  If you are going to cancel football on the pretense of safety, you damn well better cancel campus as well as that is far more dangerous.

Joined: 09/20/2014

MGoPoints: 18475

crg

August 26th, 2020 at 3:26 PM ^

I believe the argument comes down to the *added* risks from contact sports on top of the base risk inherent to the general student body.  I admit to not having read the Pac12 report in entirety, but as I understand it, an outline of that risk was presented there (with obvious limited specifics because there is only so much that is actually known about this disease to date).

If you want to discuss the *safest* course of action, then shutting down all operations that cannot be done remotely is certainly better - this is true for everything, not only the universities.  Yet there are myriad problems in doing that, which is why most schools are trying to keep classrooms operational.  As you alluded earlier, the real risk is not having students on-campus per se (in the classroom and walking about)... it is what those students (almost all grown legal adults) choose to do outside of that.

Joined: 04/30/2015

MGoPoints: 75054

crg

August 26th, 2020 at 6:45 PM ^

As long as the kid isn't playing with both the matches *and* flint at the same time. /s

In seriousness though, I am not certain how much the universities can be faulted for simply reopening.  Yes, young legal adults are doing foolish things on their own - leading to undesirable results such as covid spread.  However, most of it is happening off campus and beyond the university's control - they are issuing numerous warnings, threats, and other measures to discourage it.  Also - all of this (house parties, bar crawls, etc.) could still happen even if the universities did not reopen.  It might not have happened as much, but it would still happen to an extent.

I also think you might have the risk severity reversed (which scenario is the flint and which is the match).  The Feeney kid from IU was an alarm bell and is not a one-off case.  Adding to it the established covid effects on the cardiovascular-pulmonary system... there are a lot of open-ended risks added to a university student-athlete scenario.  I would like to believe that the member schools of the Big Ten and PAC had an army of well qualified lawyers and medical professionals telling their presidents not to proceed with this fall sports season.  Their arguments were likely compelling since those conferences willingly chose to forgo hundreds of millions in combined revenue and and other losses.

Joined: 04/30/2015

MGoPoints: 75054