Unverified Voracity Just Isn't Going To Work
Let's remember some guys, 1970s Kentucky edition. Run, don't walk, to this reminiscence about a reminiscence about the 1954 Kentucky-Tennessee game:
There's a miraculous punt. You know you want it.
[After THE JUMP: you can want college football to happen but I don't think the virus is going to cooperate.]
Man, I just don't think it's gonna work. College football looks like they're going to try to have a season during what's going to be the pandemic's second wave. I just don't see how that's going to happen. There's a strong disconnect between this reality…
"I think it's unrealistic to think that we won't have positive tests on campus and positive tests in locker rooms," Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby told ESPN. "Somebody somewhere is going to have that occur, and they'll have to deal with it."
…and what happens after. If one person on a football team has it chances are a large number will. Either that or there won't be anyone practicing:
This would be of interest to me if I was, say, a strength coach preparing to welcome players back to campus in the coming weeks. https://t.co/CLFaRm0OWv
— Zach Barnett (@zach_barnett) May 20, 2020
Socially distanced line splits aren't going to work. Football might as well be purpose-designed to spread respiratory disease.
There's definitely evidence that vocal projection, particularly yelling as meat packing workers have to over the din of the line, increases transmission. https://t.co/D74KVh3opm
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 12, 2020
When teams get infected it won't be one person, it'll be 40. And while players are not in a high-risk group there are many coaches who are.
It seems inevitable that when someone on a team comes down with COVID-19 that the result will be game cancellations.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, answered that question earlier this week when asked by NBC’s Peter King what might happen if four players tested positive. “You got a problem there,” Fauci told King. “You know why? Because it is likely that if four of them are positive and they’ve been hanging around together, that the other ones that are negative are really positive. So I mean, if you have one outlier (only one player testing positive), I think you might get away. But once you wind up having a situation where it looks like it’s spread within a team, you got a real problem. You gotta shut it down.”
Teams will get knocked out for two games, three games, whatever. The season will dissolve into a farce.
Also in this skepticism. The NBA is thinking about having everything at a single neutral site. That's how far they have to go. You're not going to be able to do this for people who are supposedly not employees and are supposed to be part of a university community.
FWIW. Harbaugh on playing:
“To answer your question, heck yeah I’d be comfortable coaching a game without any fans. If the choice were play in front of no fans or not play, then I would choose to play in front of no fans. And darn near every guy I’ve talked to on our team, that’s the way they feel about it.”
Today in "can athletic directors count?" Central Michigan axed its men's track and field team. One small problem:
The NCAA requires FBS athletic departments to field at least 16 programs across various sports, including six men's programs.
CMU now has 16 total programs, including just five men's sports, meaning the university will need to add a men's program or receive a waiver from the NCAA.
CMU is paying football head coach Jim McElwain 700k. Cutting track and field will save CMU 600k. The NCAA should absolutely not offer CMU a waiver as long as anyone in that athletic department is making six figures. CMU is prioritizing bloated salaries over scholarship athletes.
Gordon Gee: still Gordon Gee. Strong Michael Scott energy from former OSU and current WVU president Gordon Gee:
"We need to learn to dance with the pandemic rather than being fearful of it," West Virginia president Gordon Gee said. "We have moved from 'The Hammer,' which I call where we just locked everything down, to what I call 'The Dance.'"
Like a whole lot of people, Gee probably read the viral Medium post that terminology is lifted from. Or at least had it described to him by an underling.
Chaundee Brown is optimistic about his waiver. Andrew Kahn talked to him:
"I'm in the process of (applying for) my waiver right now," Brown said. "It's looking like I'm going to play next season."
He did not expand on his optimism but said he very much prefers to suit up sooner rather than later.
Brown's former AAU coach:
"No one knows for sure," Ricks, the AAU coach, said of Brown's chances of receiving a waiver. "It's up to the NCAA. With the mass exodus at Wake Forest (four players transferred this offseason) and coaching change along with a few other things, we think he has a good case. It's up to the NCAA though."
Who's ready to spin the Wheel Of Waivers?
Also in transfers. More on Nojel Eastern's odd situation from Brendan Quinn:
Last week, Purdue transfer Nojel Eastern also committed to Michigan. The junior made his announcement on Twitter, but as of Tuesday afternoon— five days after the fact — Michigan had yet to announce Eastern’s addition.
According to two sources, Eastern is not yet enrolled in the university and his potential addition is an ongoing process that is not yet close to being completed. There is not total clarity on the status of his transfer to Michigan.
There's no urgency to enroll, I suppose, but "an ongoing process that is not yet close to being completed" sounds like a long way from a sure thing.
It's a shotgun world. The revolution continues apace:
Percentage of plays run from shotgun among all FBS teams:
— PFF College (@PFF_College) May 20, 2020
2014: 70.3%
2015: 72.2%
2016: 74.9%
2017: 77.7%
2018: 78.4%
2019: 79.7% pic.twitter.com/oglRfCrvYc
Surprise! Jim Heckman drives another sports media property into the ground:
This is from today's SEC filing which is from Q3 of 2018 because they are that far behind in massaging all of their bullshit. If you're a finance/private equity, you can take a look here. Would love an opinion on everything going on.https://t.co/hBhMjzXFit https://t.co/iUanlrYd9v
— Ben Koo (@bkoo) May 18, 2020
I'm sure he managed to extract personal wealth out of this fiasco like he always does.
Etc.: London game against UK pushed to 2022. This blog is duty bound to link any and all Tim Beckman content. Danny Manning on Brown.
The virus is not dangerous the virus is no more dangerous to those not in nursing homes than the flu. Why won’t people believe the data? Why has this become the worst thing ever? I will never understand it.
People do believe the data. The claims you made are not true. They are not supported by the data. They are talking points put out by Fox News and Russian Facebook plants.
And even if the mortality rate was the same between the flu and Covid-19 for the non-elderly (it isn't), that doesn't take into account the severe, permanent lung and organ damage done to many Covid-19 survivors, which is in no way mirrored by the Flu. It ignores the growing evidence of non-respiratory expressions of Covid-19, such as Kawasaki's disease in children. It ignores the fact that we do not have good data to understand if and how this novel coronavirus may mutate, which could be a Really Big Deal-- and if you wait until it mutates to lock things down, it's already game over. It ignores the fact that it's now almost certain that people can get the disease over again within weeks of having been pronounced healthy.
It also ignores the overwhelming evidence that the official death count attributed to Covid-19 is significantly under counted; for example, in New York alone, there have been 20,000+ deaths more this year than in the same period last year-- AFTER accounting for all the deaths attributed to Covid-19. That's with traffic fatalities and workplace fatalities down. Most of those deaths were dismissed as natural causes or 'unknown', or chalked up as drug use or heart attacks without autopsies (because coroners are overwhelmed), but there is approximately 0% chance that deaths from those causes are actually up 20,000 over 4 months. The actual death toll is almost certainly much higher than has been reported, and those uncounted deaths are much more likely to be among the non-elderly population, because when an old person dies, they absolutely look for Covid-19, whereas they might not in a younger person if there was another plausible explanation at hand.
And finally, even if all of this wasn't true, even if what you said was word for word true, why shouldn't I be anxious and worried about something that is targeting my 80 year old in-laws and 70 year old mother? Why shouldn't I want the communities they live in to do what they can to contain this virus, in order to protect their elderly populations?
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