PROVO – It may be the virus that stops college football this fall, but it could be argued that all the political exaltation of the election year and the fanfare of the media could be the nail in the coffin.
Pac-12 and Big Ten have announced that they will play only conference games as long as the season begins. Ivy League schools including Harvard, Princeton and Cornell canceled their football seasons entirely. The Big East canceled all non-conference fall sports competitions, while the MEAC cancels all fall sports, including soccer. The WCC is delaying the start of fall sports like golf and soccer.
In other words, it is safer for Utah to travel to California, Washington, Arizona and Colorado than to visit BYU from 45 miles away.
Conference commissioners can apply as much as they want, prepare as much as they can for an opening to soccer, but a governor in any state within its limits can stop any meeting, any competition in any field at any time.
Remember, we lost the NCAA Tournament in March and these virus numbers were not what they are today.
NCAA medical guidelines are expected to require athletes to wear masks during training, social distance, and tests, a true brain tickler, 72 hours before the initial kicks each week. The cost of testing for an athletic department could be staggering. Most of the country’s athletic departments ran in the red before the pandemic. Now, with large projected revenue losses, layoffs and cuts, how is that spending going to fly?
And the evidence? How accurate are these tests? Is it 100%, 90%, 80%, or 50%?
The proof is a real thing. The CDC has admitted mixing COVID-19 results with antibody tests, which are two completely different diagnoses, therefore an incorrect positive total.
Surely debatable, but what is not in question is that our COVID-19 numbers are not good and the explosions in Florida, Texas, Arizona and California in recent weeks are really terrifying.
College medical guidelines for sports teams, obtained by Sports Illustrated, are in the following edict. This paragraph has a chilling impact if you are hopeful for a college football season:
“When an athlete tests positive for COVID-19, local public health officials must be notified and contact location protocols must be established. All people at high risk of exposure should be quarantined for 14 days according to CDC guidelines. This includes members of opposing teams after the competition. The difficulty is defining people at high risk of exposure and in some cases this could mean a complete team (or teams). “
Former basketball coach-turned-ESPN analyst Jimmy Dykes tweeted, “We are drowning in information while dying of wisdom.”
“We are drowning in information while starving” …
– Jimmy Dykes (@CoachJimmyDykes) July 18, 2020
This spring and summer it was Looney Tunes.
And it is an electoral year. It’s been said that in an election year, it’s all about the election. And it is better that you believe how we approach COVID-19, who to blame or who to praise has a lot to do with what we are hearing these days.
SI columnist Pat Forde wrote a column this week stating if college football will be canceled this fall, blame Donald Trump. His work never mentioned the massive street protests across the country in early June that destroyed all social distancing measures taken by the United States in the past three months.
Yes, our sports seasons are in danger. We can point the finger at anything we want, but the bottom line is this: Are we doing everything we can to limit the spread?
If not, we may have to take some personal responsibility for the gap.
Get ready. This football is going to be kicked and passed like a hot potato before making decisions to play or not to play.
But the blame game may be the true surviving sport.
