Omaha World-Herald: All 14 B1G ADs supported playing fall football

Yes, we all know that, but when football is your main money earner, do you really want to lose all your non-conference (outside of the warm up games) games to folks who were able to recruit greater talent because you had no season and they did?

The remaining are public and receive some public funding.  That alone requires a transparent process.

Pretty sure most people here didn't actually read the article, because the whole thing paints Warren in a pretty bad light. 

The gist of it was that he had no connection at all to college sports prior to getting the commissioner job.  And in the process of determining wether they should play or not, he never actually bothered to connect all of the parties involved in making the decisions.  Everything was siloed.  He'd meet with the various ADs on one call and meet with the presidents on another call.  And never actually talked to any of the coaches.  And so when it came time to actually make the decision, ADs with decades of collective experience in the league like Alvarez, Gene Smith, and Sandy Barbour were all left out.

Coaches got to make their pitch to the ADs, the ADs to Warren, and then Warren -- a guy with no college experience whatsoever --  made that pitch to 14 university heads.  And that's why people are pissed.  A decision where close to a billion in revenue, and thousands of lives would be impacted was made by someone unconnected to college sports who couldn't do the most basic step of connecting all of the people involved.

If the Big Ten President’s went into a decisional meeting without the necessary information, that is on them and their AD, not on Kevin Warren, a guy who is basically a highly paid figurehead.   Kevin Warren is doing exactly what he gets paid to do, taking the heat for an uncomfortable decision that other people made.   

"...all the presidents would have heard the economic, emotional, and mental damage that decision was going to have on the athletes, coaches, families, and the surrounding communities."

Were you also complaining about the same decision when the presidents decided to go with on-line only classes?  What about the thoughts of research students, doctoral students, incoming freshmen, all of their families, and the surrounding community that makes a yearly income because students are in town?

The athletes, apparently, were treated like *students*!!  Gah!!!  Gasp!!!

Do you know how businesses operate?  The ADs report to the Presidents/Chancellors.  There is no need for an AD, much less all of them, to be in the meeting with the Presidents. 

I am sure the President's know where their ADs stood on the issue - but once again, it's the President's decision and they're going to listen to a lot more people than just the AD. 

Football essentially pays for the non-revenue sports. Department budgets may necessitate many other sports to be cancelled, so yeah, Iowa is probably just the beginning. What happens to the lucrative TV contracts? Surely Fox isn't going to pay for games that aren't being played and they hold a 51% stake in the BIG Network in addition to other contracts for football.

Keeping the ADs off the phone with all the presidents is exactly how the process should work.  The presidents are the decision-makers, and it is incumbent on them to gather the information and gather input from their respective ADs that is needed to make the decision before the decision gets made.

What you're proposing would be an absolute shitshow--14 self-interested ADs arguing with 14 university presidents on a phone call?

This is the real world.  Unless you're at the top of the totem pole there are times when you get to provide input to your superior and have to live with the decision your superior makes with the other people in charge.

"do you really think this was a decision made without proper reasoning and context"

Yes, there doesn't seem to be any other kind when it comes to Corona. Exclusively political with the only difference being what team is making said decision.

"under control in virtually every other developed country"

Not true, just like here when things open up there are spikes.

Lets talk about "under control in virtually every other developed country."

First, most of the reason that those other countries that got hit with covid are now under control is timing.  Those countries that got hit first came out of it first.  Just like in the US, the states that got hit first came out of it first. 

Let's look at Europe: Just like us, they got hit, saw a serious spike in cases, and then a slow and gradual decline.  New York got hit shortly after and, just like Europe, saw a spike followed by a gradual decline.  Now let's look at Arizona (which is not exactly big on the lockdown measures, as many have critically pointed out).  They got hit much late than NY.  But, just like Europe and NY, they saw a spike in cases followed by a slow and gradual decline.  If you need more evidence of this, see Florida and now even Georgia.  

The problem with people who like to say that the US doesn't have this under control is that you are looking at the US as a single sample.  It is not. The US is made up of 50 sovereign states, each of which has a certain degree of authority to self-regulate.  Let's say that the fed government even had the authority to impose a national one-month lockdown back in March.  Would that have helped?  Most of the states locked down at that time on their own.  But, more importantly, we couldn't do that forever.  And, as we have seen, as states started to come out of the lockdown, the virus is there waiting to spike in locations that didn't experience a spike pre-lockdown.  Best example:  Hawaii.  Literally, a self-contained set of islands.  They locked down more than any state, even prohibiting visitors from the mainland.  Obviously, that is not sustainable forever.  And once they eased the lockdown even a bit, they saw the sharpest spike of any state.  

So, I guess my question is what could the government have done differently?  Not rhetoric and speeches, but what actual decisions could they have made that you believe would have controlled this better?  Keep in mind that the science is still not there for a rapid test and that this is a NOVEL virus.  I will certainly concede that we could have done a better job of distributing PPE to front-line workers, and that the messaging on masks could have been a ton better.  But what else?

Finally, as to other countries having this under control, Germany, UK, France and Italy are currently experiencing significant upticks in infection.