Chris Jones: College football this fall is a cruel joke and a staggering failure on the part of America's universities
When the news broke Monday morning that the University of Michigan football team planned to pause all of its “in-person activity” due to “presumptive” positive tests for coronavirus, the joke went around Twitter that denying Ohio State a sixth game was the best way for the Wolverines to deny the Buckeyes their shot at the national championship. Far better likelihood of success for Michigan to surrender to the virus than actually, you know, playing its mortal enemy.
Funny. Except we’re talking here about young student-athletes and a virus with potential long-term effects about which we know very little.
There is the way America is dealing with COVID-19: masks, lockdowns, limited attendance at weddings and funerals, canceled holiday plans, shuttered high schools, locked-down dorms, bankrupt restaurants, dark theaters. And then there is the way American universities are dealing with COVID-19 in the realm of college football: play on and make things worse.
The inconsistency — strike that, the hypocrisy — is nothing short of jaw-dropping. And when you think this is happening at our greatest public universities, that jaw starts bouncing on the floor.
History will not be kind.
Anyone clicking through the college game-day TV lineup on Saturday was treated to announcer after announcer seamlessly melding virus-cancellation speculation into the things that announcers usually address at this point in the fall, such as the strength of a team’s schedule, or the Heisman chances of the quarterback, or the fortitude of the running backs.
Incredibly, the variable that matters this year is not so much the quality of the team but the likelihood that the virus will be held at bay long enough for a team in the running for the national championship to actually play out its prescribed season. The way things are going — and let’s no longer play the game of pretending that COVID-19 has been effectively held out of these football programs, their best efforts notwithstanding — the real tension lies there, far more than on the field.
And surely the field is where it should reside. What the heck are we doing here?
Listening to speculation about the decisions of the College Football Playoff selection committee is part of the fun of watching the game. But you know the moral compass is nonexistent when a factor over which the players have zero control is turning out to be the most notable determinant of success this fall.
No individual player can do much about whether practices or games are interrupted by COVID-19 positives, and they can do even less about the extent to which the endeavors of a team they just happen to be playing (or not playing) are so interrupted.
It’s stunningly unfair to everybody and it’s making a joke of the entire season. How can the selection committee meaningfully take into account games that have not been played?
Actually, it’s impossible to do so in any meaningful way, and it strikes at the heart of the one fundamentally meritocratic thing that’s common to all great sporting activities: results, often unexpected, are allowed to actually influence outcomes. Sports are not only unpredictable but they scramble existing power structures. Week in, week out.
But in college football this season, it’s a bit like the International Olympic Committee is handing out gold medals for races that were never run but were decided on predicted outcomes. That’s not unfamiliar to some teenagers dealing with testing and college admissions this year, but this is way more crazy.
College football, unlike most SAT sessions, is actually happening in person. The students and coaches aren’t getting the health benefits from a canceled season. And yet the season is not proceeding according to any logic or fairness.
Even one of its most cheering moments, when Sarah Fuller of Vanderbilt made Power Five history Saturday as a female placekicker, came because the team’s other specialists were in quarantine. For their health, not because of the game. Fuller, surely, would rather have made history without that caveat, which was kicked under the carpet in most of the fawning press coverage. And that wasn’t right.
Nothing about this college football season is right, including it being played this fall rather than postponed until the winter or spring. An argument could be made, indeed has been made, that people need something to watch as they hole up at home. And it’s true that the NCAA is hardly alone here. The NFL is playing and dealing with many of the same issues. Across the pond, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made an exception to his draconian lockdown for so-called “elite athletes,” apparently under the assumption that the health of elite athletes is less important than the average athlete, even though logic would, if anything, suggest the opposite.
What is really going on here is that we’ve made the decision that some people ought to have their health sacrificed for our entertainment, as well as to keep the cash rolling into Big Ten and network coffers. It’s true that most scientists agree the virus has less of an impact on the young, but it also has a disproportionate impact on Black Americans, who just happen to make up most of the athletes playing college football. One thing any reasonable person should agree on in regard to COVID-19 is that little yet is known.
Adult professionals, of course, can and should be able to make their own decisions. But the continuance of this season is utterly indefensible in college football because the athletes look to their schools for nurturing, education and protection. None of which are presently taking place. None of them. It’s unbelievable. And a moral failing of staggering proportions.
Worse yet, the actual season is turning out to be about as a cruel a joke as America’s universities could ever collectively tell.
Shame on them all.
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