It is now a conflict of nuclear degree of bliss, this debate over playing the season 2020 college football amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Actually calling a ‘debate’ is an insult to citizenship.
It is a battle of the science of two conferences (Big Ten Pac-12) versus the science of three (ACC, Big 12, SEC). It is parents of half of the Big Ten schools who are asking for answers as to why their sons are not playing in the face of what is still a raging pandemic.
On Sunday, finalist Heisman Trophy Justin Fields took the fight to a new level. The Ohio State quarterback filed a petition calling on the Big Ten to “resume the 2020 football season immediately.”
It had more than 121,000 signatures in the first four hours, and the number continues to climb.
If it hadn’t all been so befuddled, it would have been sad. Ask Jon Drezner, the team doctor at the University of Washington and a member of the Pac-12 Medical Advisory Board.
“We are in the midst of a pandemic, our country is one of the least controlled on the planet,” Drezner said. “We have more deaths than any country. We have had cases all over the place. We have not done what we needed to do to play false sports.
“En dat is really sad. ”
The NCAA’s top doctor late Saturday night said there was “no way to move forward” with fall sports without drastic improvement in national tests.
But it’s not over, this battle. Not by a long shot. In fact, it is getting worse and more intense.
An expert from LSU-infected diseases seems to be calling out the decisions of the Big Ten and Pac-12 as part of a Q&A with The Athletic.
“I would say we have seen enough to develop a safe plan. They have not,” said Drs. Catherine O’Neal.
Does not matter that COVID-19 took root in the United States in March. That is not enough time for most to date a future partner, much less consider the second worst pandemic in the nation’s history. The deadliest happened a century ago, the infamous Spanish flu that killed at least 50 million people worldwide.
“Without Dr. Neal not diminishing, but if she did not feel safe playing college football this fall, I’m not sure she would represent the SEC much longer,” said Tom Mars, a leading Arkansas-based attorney who the NCAA has been fighting over vulnerability issues.
That’s where we’re with the ACC, Big 12 and SEC and hope to play this season, while the Big Ten and Pac-12 evaluate a spring season in 2021. Now choose a group of medical advisors for your version of the truth.
For these conferences, it begins to look like a trial where each side brings its own group of expert witnesses to make their case.
Who is right?
In this case, the jury not only decides, but keeps these decisions until control adjacent to mockery. (Just read some of the responses to Fields’ petition.)
The Pac-12 published a 12-page document with the medical reasons that led to his decision not to play. So far, it is the only FBS conference that provides such a statement. Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby was press last week why his conference did not explain the medical reasons why it was playing. He just said that playing is the “status quo”.
“There’s absolutely no reason not to be completely transparent with all that information,” Mars said.
That liability exempts that players affiliated with the #WeAreUnited movement two weeks ago protested against now seem as necessary as the conferences that want to cancel their seasons play.
A group of Big Ten parents asked Mars last week for advice on how to get their sons back on the field.
Mars drew up an “action plan” that began with the parents / players asking the NCAA to repeal its exemption ban, the one that was demanded in the first place by players. This means that these players and parents sign the right to pursue their respective schools if the players caught COVID-19.
Specifically, Mars wrote, the parties would sign a document requiring “liability for negligence” and ” [a] player to consciously take risks of infection. “
A more detailed part of that action plan:
The NCAA made a mistake in banning “liability” in response to senator [Corey] Booker and senator [Richard] The requirements of Blumenthal. Although this decision was intended to protect the rights of student-athletes, the NCAA’s paternalistic response to the senators’ demands resulted in student-athletes being deprived of an informed choice enabling them to pursue their dreams. pursue.
The immediate reaction: Will parents actually agree with such a thing? The answer is not obvious.
“I just dropped my daughter off at the University of Iowa yesterday,” said Gary Koerner, the father of Iowa defensive back Jack Koerner. “No one asked me to sign an exemption. No one promised me strict protocols and tracking and testing contacts. Why is it any different?”
Drezner had an equally logical statement: “Sports are being postponed because we have a pandemic that is out of control.”
One might ask: What makes footballers so special? The whole country has been – to the bare minimum – uncomfortable. There was simply not enough communal cooperation in the United States, considering the length and breadth of this tragedy, while foreign countries that adopted universal mitigation measures drastically reduced or even eliminated the spread.
What’s so wrong with being too careful? COVID-19 hot zones exist in half of the Pac-12 schools, Drezner said.
Koerner is among that group of Big Ten parents who believe that there is always risk when playing college football.
Applying for a waiver could be potentially unwelcome, but would it not be hypocritical? Would some of those players who campaigned so hard for their rights and the elimination of such exemptions now be willing to sign them off to play football?
The first question about that should be Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence: Would he and his #WeWantToPlay colleagues sign such an exemption to play?
“We believe these players will miss out on the opportunity to play football this season, jeopardizing their fitness, their luck and their futures,” Lisa and Ed McCaffrey said in a Michigan parent letter sent to the Big Ten. (Dylan McCaffrey is a QB for the Wolverines.)
Koerner asked, if conditions are safe enough for regular students to be on campus, why can’t football continue with its “strict protocols, consistent testing” [and] with some of the best medical professionals around ”?
It’s safe to say, amid this controversial dialogue, rookie Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren is under pressure. Some Big Ten parents delivered their message to conference headquarters Friday, asking for a face-to-face meeting.
There is something to be said for the Big Ten that is releasing its reason for cancellation. For the most part, the Big Ten conference consists of state institutions that use taxpayer money.
“I do not in any way want to personally attack our Big Ten leaders,” Koerner said. “But when we are in business, we all know what the principles of good leadership are. We know what the principles of bad leadership are.”
Meanwhile, Drezner said both Pac-12 and Big Ten athletes have thanked team doctors for the decision to postpone the 2020 season.
“You also have student-athletes on the other side who wanted to play, no matter what the risk,” he said. “Those are individual choices. I’m not sure this is about right or wrong.”
It’s about what kind of truth you want to believe. Last week, Nebraska coach Scott Frost threatened to leave the league after the Big Ten canceled their season. The Huskers were able to treat the coronavirus, Frost disputed.
That was another conclusion from a member of the NCAA’s COVID-19 advisory panel.
“I feel like the Titanic,” said Dr. Carlos Del Rio. “We’ve hit the iceberg, and we’re trying to decide what time we should play the band.”
Medicine should be something black and white, is not it? Not always. Therefore, there are second opinions. Therefore, it is difficult for some to accept even the basic worries of football in the midst of a pandemic.
“The one thing that’s really proven is that the more people you put together, the more dispersal you have. [of COVID-19]. It’s an absolute truth, “Drezner said.
So how did something as serious as myocarditis come about? The condition has been studied and treated since the 19th century. It is a viral infection that causes inflammation of the heart. Drezner said myocarditis has been found to be the cause of death in 9% of all cardiac-related deaths among college athletes.
That is out of factoring in COVID-19.
CBS Sports reported last week that at least 15 Big Ten players had been diagnosed with myocarditis. The condition worked hard in the decision-making of each Power Five conference.
“There’s no debate that it’s clinically relevant,” Drezner said.
Six years ago, Mars ran 30 miles a week with a resting heart rate of 60. A cold chest remained longer. A stress test revealed an arrhythmia. In the process of explaining to Mars that he contracted myocarditis, doctors declared that he had been subjected to an SDE – a sudden death.
“I live maybe to be 100,” Mars said. “I could fall dead on this phone.”
Another doctor who recently tested ‘ECG of Mars’ thought the lawyer had just suffered a heart attack. That was the long-standing evidence of Mars’ 2014 myocarditis.
This is called because the seriousness of the misery was enough for the Big Ten and Pac-12 to postpone their seasons. The ACC, Big 12 and SEC chose to plow.
True, myocarditis can also be caused by the common cold. But adding another horrible virus to the brew certainly does not help.
“That’s like saying you could be struck by lightning,” Mars said. “So, why don’t you go stand on the beach in a lightning storm with a steel stick in your hand?”
Mars is in its 60s. He’s not an athlete, but he’s in a demographic that simply can not get COVID-19.
“I treat this COVID like it’s a hit man with a $ 1 million contract on my head. I take no chances,” he said. “I hope someone kills him before he kills me.”
That is his truth.
The college football version of the truth amidst the coronavirus pandemic is getting harder to nail.
