College football 2020 offseason thread

My argument is that without a vaccine, full-contact football at any level over the course of several weeks isn’t safe in a COVID-19 environment — fans or no fans — and even a single game is iffy at best. College football is potentially even worse because of major-college coaches’ insistence that they need 120 players and a massive support staff on the sideline.

Fifty-four people died as a direct result of the Chernobyl nuclear accident — either during the incident itself or during attempts to cap and mitigate — and even the most widespread of studies say that no more than 60,000 people died as a direct and indirect result of exposure to the accident’s effects.

According to the Johns Hopkins ArcGIS, as of this moment 293,157 people have died as a result of direct exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

So you’re right — the virus isn’t Chernobyl.

 

I wasn't using Chernobyl for death count purposes. I was using it as the idea that, somehow, a college campus is radioactive with the virus in the air. It's not how the coronavirus works.

Look: Your argument has something to do with the inherent dangers of playing football and transmitting the disease in the process, leading to hotspots, etc. Fine.

My point doesn't have anything to do with the football part of it. It has to do with the illogic of "if students don't come back on campus, then football players shouldn't." It'd be safer for the football players (and the students) if the students didn't come back to campus. How is 120 guys practicing football on a campus of 0 more dangerous than that same 120 practicing on a campus of 25,000 students? It's not more dangerous. It's safer.

Now, from there, if we want to say "well, it's not right" or "it's not nice" or "these kids aren't employees!" well, fine then, say that. It just doesn't have much to do with science. It's a moral thing. Which is fine. But it isn't science.

 

For the sake or argument, let's say that there is no college football in 2020. What do colleges do with that massive support staff? That's a lot of money being paid in salaries to people who aren't really doing much. Do they lay off their staffs and re-assemble next year? I know the local Big University if facing a pretty significant financial shortfall for the coming year. Plenty of folks on campus are not going to be happy about with a bunch of coaches getting paid for not doing anything while academic departments are being asked/told to make big cutbacks.

 

This doesn’t seem promising.

Missouri State AD says athletics is budgeting as if it won't play Oklahoma football game

 

But there's something appealing about it. The Bears' new football coach is Bobby Petrino. Expletive him.

From the looks of the story, that's a bare-bones athletics program already. They're at the minimum number of men's sports as things are. Can't whack any men's team. And having invested in footbawwwl when it sold whatever soul it had to hire Petrino, it can't make even the slightest cuts to that sacred cow. Heaven forbid.

 

Kiffin Bowl!
Assuming, of course, he's still at Ole Miss in 2025. And that Los Angeles is ready and willing to host football games by then.

Ole Miss, USC Add Home-and-Home Football Series - Ole Miss Athletics

 

I have a simple request to the entire world. Can we use this pandemic as an excuse to eradicate the phrase "home and home" from the lexicon? It's inaccurate. Always has been. What's wrong with "Home and Away?" I have never understood this.

 

Kentucky fires Jomo Thompson, cheer team coaches after nudity, hazing investigation


The firings came after a three-month internal investigation that found that the coaching staff failed to provide oversight of the team during off-campus events.

Head coach Jomo Thompson and assistant coaches Ben Head, Spencer Clan and Kelsey LaCroix were released by the university on Monday. T. Lynn Williamson, a university lawyer who also served for four decades as an administrative adviser to the cheerleading squad, retired as a result of the investigation, according to portions of the investigation that were made public.

Members of the squad reportedly performed “basket tosses” — a gymnastics routine that requires throwing a person in the air — while either topless or bottomless and within view of some coaches at a team retreat at Lake Cumberland, the university’s internal investigation found.

Coaches failed to confiscate alcohol brought by students to the retreat, and coaches allowed cheerleading alumni to bring boats and alcohol to the same retreat, the release stated. Some squad members became so intoxicated that they required follow-up care, the investigation reports said.

At a separate cheerleading camp in Tennessee, some members of the team were directed by others to perform “lewd chants and wear outfits that did not include underwear,” according to the university release.

The investigation found no evidence of sexual assault or sexual misconduct. But portions of the investigation performed by members of the university’s Title IX office found that the coaching staff’s knowledge of the partially nude basket tosses — and lack of steps taken to prevent them — led investigators to conclude that the coaches allowed a “hostile environment.”

https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article242809451.html#storylink=cpy

 

Wheeeooo. Wolken's twitter is gonna melt.

 

Plenty of "this is not the time" crowd chiming in on Wolken's thread.

Predictable. Probably the same folks who say that about gun control after a mass shooting.

 

This country suffers from Economic Stockholm Syndrome

 

With a few notable examples around state capitols.