This Is Why We Can’t Have College Football — Outlaw Sports
The College Football season hasn’t even started yet and two of the Power Five conferences, the Big Ten and PAC-12, have already canceled their seasons due to Coronavirus concerns. Meanwhile, the other three conferences are moving ahead, at least partially, with conference play. It’s relatively easy for the PAC-12 and Big Ten to use the Coronavirus as a bulwark against having to play this season. After all, the safety and wellbeing of their players are hard to argue against. Unfortunately, the safety and wellbeing of the players are not why they are canceling the season.
The real issue that the Big Ten and PAC-12 are trying to avoid-is the politics of the pandemic. While it’s true that there is still much to learn about the virus; that it is highly communicable; and deadly for certain segments of the population-it is also true that the virus is far less dangerous for people under the age of twenty-five. According to an analysis by Freeop.org:
Put simply, college players are at no greater risk of harm from communicable diseases this season-than in previous seasons.
So why the pearl-clutching from the Big Ten and PAC-12? The answer is simple: These two conferences are kowtowing to the national media and their crusade to remove the President Of The United States and this is evidenced by their reporting. For example, NBC News published an article this morning titled
College football cancelled amid COVID-19? Not if Trump (or greedy colleges) can help it
There’s no hiding the ball in the headline and the sub-headline expalin further:
The push to play college football this fall ignores science, ignores the facts on the ground and ignores any nuance in every aspect of how the business of college football is constructed.
In other words, the conferences that are still planning on having a season- are horrible science-deniers, that want to murder kids.
According to the article’s author, Will Leitch:
three of the conferences are still planning on having their unpaid college students play a violent collision-based sport amidst the greatest public health crisis in 100 years of American history. Why, you ask? As usual: Politics, and of course President Donald Trump, are right there in the middle of it.
It’s important to note, before analyzing the politics, that the first sentence is a flat out lie. It’s nothing more than virtue signaling a supposed deep level of empathy for the demonstrably false claim that college football players are unpaid workers.
Consider the University of Alabama, arguably the premiere school in college football. The total cost of tuition for an in-state student is $31,080 and $51,424 for out-of-state. Multiply that by four, and that’s $124,320 for in-state and $205,696 for out-of-state. Therefore, Alabama’s scholarship players are getting compensated with an education valued in the six figures and depending on what major they choose, an investment in future earning potential without the burden of student loan debt. Furthermore, they are essentially getting on the job training from one of the best college football coaches in history that routinely sends its players into the top rounds of the NFL Draft. None of this is to say that with the exponential growth of college football over the past few decades, that the compensation for players isn’t lacking, but they are being given something of the equivalent value of money. To say they aren’t paid according to their value-has merit. To say that they are “unpaid”-is blindly stupid.
Now to Leitch’s politics:
The conferences that canceled their seasons this week are the Big Ten and Pac-12, and their schools are primarily made up of Democratic states with Democratic governors: Illinois, California, Oregon, Washington, spreading all the way to Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Colorado. There’s a Nebraska, Iowa and Utah university in there too — and it’s worth noting that Nebraska momentarily threatened to play football without the Big Ten — but the crossover between states that were mostly careful with their COVID-19 reopening and states where football has been canceled is undeniably substantial.
This is just a wordy of way saying: Democrat good. Republican bad.
Many assumed the Big 12, ACC and SEC would follow the example of the Pac-12 and Big Ten in canceling, but while that still could happen, the pressure from Trump, as well as many lawmakers, coaches, players and athletic administrators, caused them to pause. Or, put another way, it caused the conferences to put aside the health of the young men they control in order to concentrate on what was, first and foremost, best for short-term personal economic good. Which sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?
Litch is making that argument that the other conferences are ignoring the health problems that Covid-19 poses for college football players in favor of money and Trump. Presumably, he would provide the scientific evidence they are ignoring that supports his claim in the form of data. Instead, Litch demagogues the issue that Republican Governors are bad people.
College football is so powerful in this geographic area that two of governors, Mississippi’s Tate Reeves and Georgia’s Brian Kemp, explicitly listed “having college football” as a reason for their citizens to wear a mask. It is telling that neither man could come up with a more alarming prospect to their voters than an autumn without college athletics.
Think of it more as aligned with states reopening public schools. The state of Georgia is seeing a consistent increase in positive coronavirus cases, but Kemp is encouraging schools to plunge ahead and stay open for in-person schooling anyway … as is the University of Georgia itself.
In fact, nowhere in this article does Litch reference any piece of science. Rather, he spends the remainder of the piece taking for granted what he already believes to be true; which is-his politics is the science.
The push to play college football this fall ignores science, ignores the facts on the ground and ignores any nuance in every aspect of how the business of college football is constructed. It is a testament to the kind of selfish thinking that has made America an international joke. No wonder Trump climbed on board. And like the openings of the economy and in-person schooling, this isn’t going to work either.
Any degree of an open economy is better than a completely closed one. This is why the depression level unemployment numbers have fallen since States began reopening. But it seems that Litch’s comprehension of economics is worse than his understanding of what constitutes scientific evidence.
The truth is the reason why the Big Ten and Pac-12 canceled their seasons is because of the media and the people like Litch who work in it. Since March, we have seen an ever-shifting goalpost in regards to the virus in an effort to push a political narrative. At first, we were all told we needed to flatten the curve, which has now morphed into no one can get sick-ever. Republican-run states are very bad because they’ve seen spikes in cases since reopening. Simultaneously, spikes in the Democratic States, like California, that never really reopened, were ignored. We were told that at any moment, one or all states with an (R)-was going to be the next New York.
As Coronavirus Slams Houston Hospitals, It’s Like New York ‘All Over Again’ The New York Times (July 4th, 2020)
Instead, what we saw was a spike, as you would imagine when lockdowns ended-but the deaths haven’t come close to that of New York.
Coronavirus outbreak shows signs of slowing in Arizona, Texas and Florida CNBC (July 27th, 2020)
Find more statistics at Statista
Clearly, the science is not the side of Litch et al. Rather, the more likely answer is that this an election year and no advantage is off-limits. Thus, the media’s bullhorn is utilized to shame ideological opponents into submission for the sake of owning Trump and his supporters. What Litch is partially correct about is that those two conferences are in primarily Democratic territory, but if they don’t tow the party line-they’ll be browbeaten mercilessly by Litch and his cronies. If even one player tests positive, or god forbid dies because he’s one of the few in the at-risk category-the media will be climbing over themselves to stand on his grave to proclaim their moral superiority and certitude.
Ironically, what is lost on these people is the resulting damage accumulated from the second and third-order consequences of their political crusade. With the Big Ten and Pac-12 sitting out this year, 40% of college football players are going to see their draft stock tumble. And what about the college player in one of these two conferences, who was an afterthought last season-and is now missing this season and the chance to burst onto the national stage al la Joe Burrows? Does he factor in at all? Obviously not. Apparently all of these players’ futures are worth sacrificing if it means winning in November. But that’s okay. Because hating Trump means never having to say you’re sorry.
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Originally published at https://theoutlawsports.com.
