Will COVID-19 be the needle that finally bursts the sports bubble?

There was a whole shitshow about this at USC with the kicker, Matt Boermeester, who made the field goal that beat Penn State in the Rose Bowl. His girlfriend was on the tennis team. They were in an alley behind his apartment. They were pretend fighting. A guy on men's tennis team, who knew her, saw it, and thought it was a real fight. He reported it to his coach and his coach was obligated to report it to the Title IX office at USC. Even though the girlfriend said they were just playing around, Boermeester was kicked off the football team and expelled from school. He is suing. I don't think there is a final outcome to this yet.

 

MLB average attendance rose about 80% from 1945 to 1946. Grew slightly over the next three years and then declined again in 1950. But people did flock back to the park in the first chance they had post-war. Kind of amazing.

 

Where did I say anything about the police? For a starter coaches are no longer mandatory reporters. They can know what happened without an obligation to report it, and in the last sentence it gives the school an out not to report it at all. It seems to me that when you loosen the reporting requirements you are just asking for abuse. Look at the Michigan St. and Ohio St. (and any number of other) cases for how much was ignored or obscured when they *did* have the obligation to report.

Read it:

"Under current Title IX guidelines, coaches, athletic directors and other institutional team personnel are mandatory reporters. The same goes for faculty, athletic directors, residential life staff, etc. They are required to report any instance of sexual misconduct or sexual discrimination to the Title IX office or appropriate school officials. There does not need to be a formal complaint to do so.

This stipulation is what has gotten many coaches and institutions into trouble in high-profile cases. Michigan State was fined $4.5 million in September for its mishandling of abuse claims against Larry Nassar.

The new regulations drop the mandatory reporters guidance for coaches and athletic trainers, instead requiring reports to be made to the Title IX coordinator or an official with “authority to institute corrective measures.”

The government changed the rules, it said in the document, to “respect the autonomy of students” to choose whether they want to tell someone with the intent of filing a Title IX report or for another reason. That reason may be "receiving emotional support without desiring to 'officially' report,” per ESPN."

 

A big part of the 50s decline was the Yankees ascended again in the AL and every other team, long before divisional and wild card playoffs, was relegated to also-ran status by June.

Attendance in both leagues in the early 50s in particular was abysmal and led to the start of franchise movement. The Braves went from 281K in Boston in 1952 to 1.8M in County Stadium the next year, for example. Every team that moved saw a gate spike in their first season.

 

The economy boomed as we took advantage of the rubble that was the rest of the world.

Post-pandemic, we're the rubble.

 

kind of wild that there were only 10 unique markets in baseball in 1950.

 

Even back then, people saw that as a market mismatch. There was no way 2 teams could survive in Boston, Philly, and St. Louis. One, not always the same one, was always a basket case on the field and at the box office. So the weak sisters of the early '50s started moving.

 

The Braves drew 5.7 million in the 5 year period 1946-50.

That included the 1948 WS team, which went to pieces fast in 1950 mainly due to stupid trades, so attendance crashed.

The Braves bolted for Milwaukee in 1953 mainly to beat Bill Veeck and the St. Louis Browns from going there. The Braves pulled up stakes and made the move literally two weeks before the opening of the season.

 

If Dabo and Gundy get their wish and college footbawwwl starts up, what will be the threshold for continuing/halting the season if people start testing positive?
I did some research, and it's subjective as to what consists of a hotspot. By Sept. 12, the end of the season's second full week, 78 FBS teams will be in one or more of the following buckets:
1) The team is located in a hotspot.
2) It will have hosted one or more opponents located in a hotspot.
3) It will have played one or games in a hotspot.
4) An opponent has previously fit into one of the first three buckets.

 

I refuse to worry about football until the end of July or so. Things have changed a great deal in each of the last two months, and I see no reason to think that things are suddenly going to settle down when we reopen with the virus still active.

 

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