College football 2020 offseason thread

There's at least one guy who thinks they should play.

 

In this case, however, the entire group intent on partying has already been drinking and probably shouldn't go to the club. Sure, they all hate the buzz-killer, but the buzz probably needed to be killed.
I am surprised that any Power 5 league would want to be the one to go first. I'm surprised anybody would want to be first. You'd think they'd want to wait a few days until they all knew that all were on board with pulling the plug. Then everybody releases statements simultaneously. Or they combine on the same statement. Or something.

 

They're not exactly connected.

The Big Ten commissioner has wanted to do this for awhile. For better, for worse, you love it, you hate it, he's long wanted that, a few others do, too, and they want everyone else to want that, as well, and cancel.

The MAC canceling is a cover for all the buy games they just lost, plus the fact that a lot of programs are in states where you can't seat any fans. They were set to lose a shitload of money once the Big Ten went conference-only and Northern Illinois reps cleverly shifted the conversation exactly one day after the Big Ten made that announcement.

Again, love the MAC's stated rationale, hate it, whatever. The MAC was going to lose money.

 

He is not making an argument for playing football. He is making an argument for keeping football players on campus. And it may be a good one.
Do we know players would be sent home if there is no season? Maybe that's the deal. I don't know. But if that is the deal, that's a problem. If you cancel a season for health reasons, you should keep players on campus for health reasons if the science says Lawrence is right and they're better off being in a low-density environment with proper nutrition, etc. As things stand, football players are the only students on campus until at least mid-September. If there are no games, keep them on campus.
But none of Lawrence's points makes a compelling argument for playing. He has no way of knowing that his teammates are safer playing a contact sport than they are in not playing. Nobody has total certainty in this. Just consider the fact that many plays in football end with a pile of humanity in which people breathe on each other in very close proximity. Also consider the delays in testing and the unavoidable delay between infection and a positive test. These factors mean we're not sure that everybody in a game is COVID-free even if they've tested negative three days prior to kickoff.
Lawrence is speaking from the heart, which is great when it comes to motivational addresses or matters of respect for your fellow human, etc. He is, from all accounts, a good egg. But we should not listen to his emotional entreaties about the alleged necessity of playing football any more than he should listen to an epidemiologist's recommendations on check-down management against Notre Dame's defense.
I'm sorry, but I'm just not seeing how we can declare football to be a "safe haven" from this disease when we have no evidence that it can be played safely and when we now know that athletes can get COVID and can develop cardiac problems from it. That, to me, is a game-changer.

 

Your argument would have been better if Drake fielded a football team and was a member of the MAC. #Seinfeld

 

The SEC deserves grief, but let's not forget that 10 of the 14 ACC schools (not counting ND) are situated in states that joined the Confederacy too.

 

Yep. At least a couple of those states' current governors have mandated mask-wearing and, in the case of a Trumpist race track, gone to court and shut the joint down after its events became super-spreaders.
Of course, there are the shared ACC/SEC states of Georgia and Florida, where the governors are more interested in winning Trump's love than safeguarding the health of the constituents they swore to protect.

 

There's a trending hashtag on Twitter labeled #WeWantToPlay that a number of active college football players, including Trevor Lawrence, are putting their names to. So I'm going to go ahead and assume that he actually does want to play football, and not just imprison himself and his teammates on campus for the entire semester without football.
Seriously, if there are no classes and no football, then keeping them on campus is damn near criminal. There's no reason for them to be there at that point.

And, if nobody has total certainty that they're safer playing football vs. not playing football, then it works the other way as well, right? How can you say it's safer not to play than it is to play, when playing means you're undergoing daily screenings, monitoring and testing for the virus? And playing also means people (hopefully) have an incentive to avoid other places where they might be at risk, vs. doing whatever the hell they want because what does it matter?

 

Obviously he’s arguing to play. I said it poorly. What I meant is that his argument for playing is not persuasive because it assumes facts not in evidence.

 

As with MLB, an emergency meeting over a completely predictable situation. LOL

"On Sunday, ESPN reported that commissioners of the Power Five conferences held an emergency meeting over growing concern fall sports can't be played because of the coronavirus pandemic."

 

We have become a culture with no adults in the room. There's nobody willing to say "no, that's a very bad idea" to combat the "well, everybody's doing it so I should be allowed to do it as well."

How somebody with the power of authority doesn't want to take that responsibility is the biggest failure in our lifetime. That runs directly from the clown in the Oval Office right down to the school boards and superintendents of nearly every state in this country. "Not my decision" is literally killing our society.

YES, people are getting sick with COVID-19, whether it's on the football field or at home. But there's no equivalancy there. Your chances of getting sick go up expotentially in locker rooms, workout rooms and perhaps spending three hours face to face against an opponent. Given 100 people in an enclosed area, it just takes one positive case to start the chain reaction.

You only have to look at the Marlins, Cardinals and about 1,000 other viral outbreaks to see it's not a feasible situation under the circumstances.

Your chances of getting sick sitting at home where you can control your own "personal bubble" are significantly lower. If you're dumb enough to go out and party, that's on you, not on whether you didn't play football this fall.

This is an easy call. Why is this so fricking hard? I get the economics. But economics shouldn't be the driving force behind this decision. What is the long-term best option for the WELL-BEING of both the individuals and the sport? They know exactly what to do but won't do it.

Man up, for Christ's sake.