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The Big Ten became the first Power 5 conference to cancel fall sports, including the money-making monster, college football. This move came about a week after the conference released their conference-only schedule and a few days after the MAC canceled their season. It was followed by a massive wave of social media posts from big-time coaches and athletes — Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, Jim Harbaugh, Ryan Day, and many more — expressing their desire to play football this fall so strongly that the Big Ten took a minute to reconsider their decision. It was to no avail, however, as they announced the cancellation of fall sports earlier today. They were followed by the Pac-12, who canceled their football season just moments ago.
Is conducting a safe college football season feasible? There are 130 FBS teams (65 Power 5 teams) with 105 players (many of whom do not suit up for games) and many coaches. The players are also student-athletes — which the NCAA will constantly brand into everybody’s foreheads — who have student obligations like classes or study groups and are likely to interact with other students on campus (unless there is a bubble, which will be talked about later in the article).
It is true that college athletes, who are young and healthy, are less likely to die from COVID-19. However, death is not the only consequence of the virus. There are lasting medical issues that can be caused by the virus, such as myocarditis (see Eduardo Rodriguez, who will miss the entire MLB season due to a post-COVID-19 heart condition, and Brady Feeney, an Indiana University lineman suffering from post-COVID complications), and many coaches are in the at-risk age group. College football was never going to happen if we downplayed the effects of COVID-19, not in March or now. It is hypocritical for people who refused to wear a mask or social distance for five months to blame others, like the media, for the cancellation of football.
Creating a safe season is not easy, and perhaps not possible.
One of the most polarizing coaches in football is Jim Harbaugh, who released a statement yesterday (shown below) illustrating his desire to play this fall. However, unlike many people who have come forward expressing a desire to play, Harbaugh explaining his position, using Michigan’s lack of positive tests as evidence of a safe environment. He says that playing amid a pandemic is not easy, but if everyone takes the virus seriously and acts accordingly, football can be played.
Urging conference commissioners and university presidents to allow football to occur based on a false sense of invulnerability from the virus is dangerous. Michigan, whose president, Mark Schlissel, holds a professorship of microbiology and immunology and a professorship of internal medicine, has instituted strict protocols to ensure the safety of their athletes and staff.
Is it reasonable to assume that every athletic program will emulate Michigan’s essential efforts? Will Michigan’s results (zero positive tests out of the last 353 administered according to Harbaugh) change when students are back on campus? No one can know for sure. Michigan’s successful protocols require everyone to buy in, making it difficult to ensure the same success when expanded to a significantly larger group with a lot more people involved. One player can ruin it for an entire conference.
Many universities also do not have the means to support a strict system as Michigan or Ohio State have successfully instituted. They may not be able to afford to test at least twice a week or to house athletes in hotels to get them out of dorms and away from other students. This puts the athletes and staff of universities who generate less revenue at a competitive, and health, disadvantage.
The athletes who would benefit from following strict protocols would almost certainly be safer with football than without it. As a rising senior at the University of Michigan, I can almost guarantee I will be more vulnerable, as a student on campus attending in-person class and congregating with friends, to catching the virus than athletes if they follow the rules.
That is a big ‘if’ however. MLB has strict protocols that were agreed upon by the players, which the NCAA can’t do, and some players still broke the rules. The result was an outbreak on two teams and many canceled games. Even without games, athletes will still remain on campus as students where they can receive the necessary care from their athletic department. They will not be returning home to unsafe environments as many have suggested.
Numerous people critical of the Big Ten’s decision to cancel fall sports cite liability as the deciding factor, asserting that universities are afraid to be sued by a player who gets sick. However, determining who is liable for a player getting sick is only an issue if a player gets sick; it isn’t an issue if no one gets sick. Universities would still be at risk of being sued — everyone is always at risk of getting sued — but the best way for them to prevent having to pay for any damages is to enact strict health and safety protocols. If the conferences force schools to do so, and the schools follow the protocols, it would be hard for an athlete to prove that the school was negligent.
Only mentioning the legal battle concerning liability and not the cause of the battle — an athlete getting sick because the university did not do their part to keep athletes safe — is irresponsible and cherry-picking the points that best fit a certain narrative. At the end of the day, it is still about keeping players safe.
The success that Michigan and other colleges had early on in this process showed that it could be possible to play a football season and keep people safe. It would take an immense amount of planning with the mindset that player safety comes first. This is where the NCAA fails.
The protocols needed, potentially a bubble, would undermine amateurism and the “student-athlete” label. If a conference was to institute a bubble, which would require a massive amount of planning, you are removing the “student” from “student-athlete.”
Separating players from the rest of the student body and campus and determining what they can and can’t do without allowing them to benefit from the system that generates billions of dollars, which cannot function without them, and forcing them to accept all of the risks is proof that the athlete comes before the student.
Michele Roberts, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association, likened a bubble to incarceration before theirs was operational. Although Roberts admitted she was wrong once she saw it in action, her concerns were valid and very applicable to a college football bubble. NBA players were threatened by a dramatic loss of revenue resulting in a massive loss of income from forgoing the remainder of the season. College athletes do not have the incentive of income to force them to comply with the strictest of protocols, nor are they getting paid to do so. Using a bubble would turn amateur athletes into professionals.
This is one of the reasons why it is aggravating to see people who have never cared about the treatment of college athletes expressing their desire for college football, pretending that they have the athletes’ best interests in mind. If you are retweeting Trevor Lawrence when he tweets about the unity between college athletes, you also need to stand behind them in their fight for more benefits in the future. You can’t pick and choose when to support athletes to your comfort and personal benefit.
Is a college football season possible? I don’t know. The risks from COVID-19 are present, but teams have been successful in mitigating that risk up until this point. They have done this by recognizing the uncertainty and consequences of the virus and planning accordingly, not by disregarding it.
What SEC commissioner Greg Sankey is doing right now is smart. He’s being patient, delaying the start of the season to allow for more time to craft a plan that addresses the risks of COVID-19, and continuing to try to make it work. When it’s all said and done, the SEC may follow the Big Ten’s lead and cancel the season as well, but they are going to put in the effort to make a season work. It’s hard to know without being in the conversations what the Big Ten discussed, but it seems too early to cancel college football.
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