Opinion Roundtable: Discussing The Likelihood Of Football Happening
With the NCAA approving a six-week plan for the return of college football, and with Michigan football players (as well as men's and women's basketball) back on campus and set to begin voluntary workouts June 22, how confident are we that there will be a college football season now?
We discuss...
Michael Spath
I've been convinced for weeks, ever since states began lifting their stay-at-home orders. The southern states were never going to be denied SEC football this fall, nor were the states of Texas and Oklahoma going to be denied their teams. Gradually momentum has shifted on this front to where I do expect the majority of programs to play this season.
Now what happens if players begin testing positive, like recently happened at Michigan (though only two of 221 tests), Texas and Clemson? I don't think it will matter. I spoke to former Wolverine QB Devin Gardner about this a few weeks back and he was adamant that if given the choice between playing (even with the COVID-19 risks) and not playing, almost every football player would play.
Why? Because it's what they do. Who they are. And for a good many, it's their "escape" from a life without education, without opportunity. Gardner even said had he not received a scholarship to play football he never would have had a chance to go to college.
"Let’s be completely honest, football is the biggest thing in the underprivileged neighborhoods where there is not a lot of money, so football is something that can change their life by just playing a game," Gardner said. "For a lot of athletes, if they don’t get a chance to make something of themselves playing football, then that's it.
"If that person doesn’t play football and doesn’t get a scholarship he essentially is thinking, 'What do I do?' I’m not going to be able to get into Michigan without playing football. My family doesn’t have money to send me to school without a scholarship. Growing up I was that kid ... there was no way I would have gone to college had I not gotten a scholarship, and I had that real conversation with my mom when I was a junior in high school.
“A lot of people their identity is a football player, and they are talented enough to make that their identity, which is kind of getting stripped away from them and that’s devastating."
So many players dream about a life in the NFL and the riches that come with it. They need football and they need to play. And with schools like Ohio State asking players to sign waivers, programs will protect themselves from liability, and really, that's the only holdup to returning. Schools can't afford to get sued. As long as they protect themselves legally, they will proceed because they can't afford the financial hit of not playing.
Where does the players' health fit into all of this? It will be a factor but only if overwhelming numbers contract COVID. Even then, as elite athletes, college players are not in the 'vulnerable' category and most assume will battle mild symptoms. It's callous and I'm speaking not of my own opinion but that which I believe the powers-to-be hold, but it would take players dying from COVID-19 for college football to come to a grinding halt.
Brandon Brown
I think there's definitely going to be a start to the football season but I wonder what will happen if there's a big outbreak or worse, severe illness or death involving a student athlete a few weeks into the season.
We saw earlier in the week that Ohio State is having its players sign a "Buckeye Pledge", which essentially equates to a waiver absolving the university from any responsibility or blame. I actually fully understand it from a business standpoint but it feels like informed people know that something bad is inevitable.
Still, players want to play, coaches want to coach, fans want to watch and the fat cats who get rich off college football every year want to do it again in 2020, so it's going to happen.
With athletes returning to campuses, we are starting to see and hear about higher numbers when it comes to positive tests, like the 20-plus at Clemson, but there doesn't seem to be any panic and everyone involved seems to be good with the outcome and confident that everyone is going to recover and be fine.
At Michigan there were only two positive tests out of more than 200, which are actually outstanding results. It's all happening early enough and the returns so far are pretty optimistic, so I feel pretty good saying that football will 100% happen. I'm just not sure it will continue throughout the season and we obviously know it's going to be quite a bit different than every before.
Steve Deace
I am 99.99999% percent confident there will be a college football system for the following reasons:
1) Outside of a 100-mile radius of New York City and a couple of other hot spots, much of the rest of the country never really felt the impact of the pandemic as much as the lockdowns, unless they lived in a nursing home or had a loved one there. Hospitalizations and deaths have cratered nationwide. Yes, positive tests are going up as there's more reopening and broader testing, but those are overwhelmingly asymptomatic. The median age of death in the United States and most other developed countries has been 80 years-old or older. Switzerland completely reopened its country when it realized .005% of deaths were under the age of 50.
2) I believe you'll see something interesting play out these next couple of weeks with the mass testing of student-athletes as they return to campus. When the public sees the vast majority of these positive tests will also be asymptomatic, and an even smaller percentage than that result in symptoms that don't require hospitalization, they'll realize why scientists in Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Japan, South Korea, The Netherlands, New Zealand, and elsewhere have approved the re-opening of their countries. Why there's baseball in South Korea, Switzerland and New Zealand are fully returning to normal with slight modifications, and professional soccer has returned in Germany and the United Kingdom. Plus, the players are also probably safer in a controlled environment getting the consistent high-end medical care afforded to student-athletes than they are spread out across the country, too.
3) There's too much at stake financially not to have a season, which is why I was always confident unless this was an extinction-level event there would be. Without a football season the amount of jobs and educational opportunities lost would be incalculable and probably irrecoverable. Not having a football season would be an extinction-level event for this industry in and of itself.
4) Parents obviously seem confident their children will be well taken care of, because we're not seeing a bunch of stories about reluctant parents unwilling to send their children back to campus. That tells me they not only feel safe to play, but want to play.
Eric Rutter
The answer to this question is one that seems to shift daily, but the latest batch of coronavirus-related news has me feeling a bit less than optimistic. When student athletes were allowed back on campus, the general assumption was that a few players would test positive for COVID-19 here and there but that the vast majority would test negative, as was the case at Michigan. In Ann Arbor, only two out of over 200 players tested returned positive results, so Michigan as a whole received rather encouraging results. However, Clemson football has already found 23 players that tested positive for the virus, which is a startling number and a good portion of the Tigers' roster. Now, the important aspect to monitor is if the players enter a true quarantine period and whether or not more Clemson players test positive after these initial cases reintegrate with the team. If most colleges are forced to overcome a slight initial hurdle of several positive cases and then are able to reign those numbers back in after 2-3 weeks, then I feel quite confident that college football will be played this fall. As everyone knows, a mass amount of money hangs in the balance depending on if college football is played, so schools and athletes will push to play their seasons as scheduled and push hard. But if schools such as Clemson continue to report such high numbers, it will be a lot more difficult to justify playing football if players suffer negative health side effects from this activity.
