College football 2020 offseason thread

I see what you did.

 

Exaggeration for effect. Just highlighting that the SEC would end up with fewer games than everyone else because they must have sisters of the poor on their schedules.

But yeah, this may all be academic in the end.

 

They'll work that out and play outside the divisions. If by some miracle the P5 plays out a schedule, I expect an eight team playoff, and the SEC will make damn certain that their teams have as many games on the schedule as the other conferences.

 

They are chasing several billion dollars.

And believe it or not a lot of jobs are on the line too. Not just the additional 12 offensive analysts for the football team, but people that actually do honest work for salaries that are enough to just pay the bills. I get the rush to shut it all down and I'm not saying that isn't the best option. But most of us probably know a decent assistant SID that really needs football and basketball to happen so their life isn't completely destroyed. They are the ones that I'm hoping things improve for.

 

SEC and academic in the same sentence? I see what you did there!

 

"The rush to shut it all down"??? They're doing everything they can come up with NOT to shut it down when the Covid numbers make it obvious that it should be - but the dollar numbers mean that they won't unless forced to. Certainly teams in Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and more should not even be considering holding practices, let alone playing the season - but they will, for as long as they can get away with it.

 

I am one of these people. Am I worried about the future of my job (which isn't a typical sports comm gig)? Yes. I'm more worried about all of the people that work in every stadium every home game at high school, college and pro venues all across the country. That's a helluva lot of people. Add to that the fact that so many businesses in college towns -- restaurants, bars, hotels -- get in the black for the year because of football weekends.

 

I'm not talking about them...I'm talking about us! This constant theme of "why are they bothering? All sports should end NOW!"

There are loads and loads of threads on this board rightfully bitching about the shitty state of the industry, the assholes who are in charge and the very good people that get dumped in their reign of terror. There are a lot of good people that work for sports leagues and in college athletics programs as well. Many of them have the same background that we do and some of them we've worked with at some point in life. So I'm rooting for those guys and for those guys I hope they are doing everything possible to try to get sports going this season and hoping it can be done with everyone's safety in mind. It's all right to be critical of the process and still hold out hope for a good outcome.

 

There is a very big difference between being aware of the risks of putting 100 players plus various staff together in meeting rooms, weight rooms, dining halls, dorms, etc., of seeing the stats blow up and realizing that this country has not and is not yet taking Covid seriously, and "rooting for the shutdown of sports", a claim which has been made here before.

I don't want anyone to lose their job or their income. That said, people can get through that a lot better than they can death or permanent damage to their health or that of their family.

 

I don't know how many times you've had your house foreclosed on and/or had your family removed from their residency. I hope never and I hope it never happens.

But if you don't think those things can do permanent damage to one's health and mental well being. You are sadly mistaken.

 

Oh, here we go with the “the cure is worse than the disease” bullshit. Fuck that, man. If we had leadership in place, people’s lives wouldn’t depend on whether a bunch of teenagers played a game or not. We’d find a way to route the flood of money that exists in this country to these people to keep them afloat while we ride the virus out. But we don’t. So we “compromise,” and if people die, or have permanent physical scars, well, shit, you take risks just getting out of bed every day.

That’s bullshit thinking, and it needs to be shouted down from the highest levels.

I want NOTHING more than to be able to watch football on the weekends in the fall. But you know what? We the People gave that up because we wanted to go to the bars. Compromises, man.

We can’t do what we were doing before. We have to find another way to get through the days. It’s going to require leadership. And it’s going to require facing the fact that putting people at very proven and very real risk isn’t a solution to anything.