The Big Ten: It's Not What we Learned, but What We Shouldn't Forget
The Big Ten is officially playing football in 2020 after telling the nation how potentially unsafe attempting to play this season would be to the future health of players. Their basis for this contentious argument was myocarditis.
According to those running the show in that conference, it's no big deal, and doctors have since changed their medical opinions on what potential long-lasting impacts the condition could have on players.
It seems to me for those paying attention; the same thing was written here earlier this summer in an article entitled "Myocarditis: Reason To Cancel Football or Not?"
In the interest of brevity here, I won't regurgitate what was written in that article. Instead, refer you to it to see what was said by medical experts then that the Big Ten was either unwilling to see or missed altogether.
So the big boys of the Big Ten are now back, despite the risks they so passionately spoke on previously.
On Monday, Ross Dellenger and Pat Forde of Sports illustrated wrote on the "Ten Thing Learned From the Big Ten's Reversal on Playing a Fall Season," wherein they did an outstanding job of chronicling events in this drama.
Among those ten points, their third point stands out.
3. The Big Ten is playing nine games in nine weeks. After all the talk about safety and athlete health care, is that really safe? A reporter Wednesday wisely asked that question during a conference call with Ohio State team physician James Borchers.
"We know that that's a significant number of games but it's been done in the past,” says Borchers. “Our medical subcommittee recommended it was safe to move forward.”
Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren has drawn fire from every angle since the decisions to postpone the season became public, as rightfully, he deserved.
It's not that Warren is a bad person; I don't even know him. However, when a specific bit of news became public, it was a direct hit to the leader of one of the premier conferences in college athletics, and he looked terrible for it.
What was that hit to the legacy of Warren and the Big Ten?
Warren, whose son is a member of the Mississippi State football team, continued to participate in preparation for the coming season while the kids in the Big Ten were being kept from the field because of the dangers of myocarditis and playing a fall season in 2020.
While one should never define a person, this one should certainly be remembered moving forward when it is unsafe for some, but not for the loved ones of the man making the decisions.
It was a bad look then and remains one now because Warren has never, to my knowledge, spoken publicly about the discrepancy in his call for his conference and that for his son.
Maybe it's time he addresses this and moves on, but until then, the hypocrisy here is too much to overlook.
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