This Week's Obsession: Is Football Feasible This Year?
In which we attempt to answer the looming question.
Is there going to be football this year? And how?
Seth: Clearly the answer to this is "it depends" but we're at the point now where we can set some contours of the possibility right?
Ace: To some extent, sure. The NCAA and individual conferences are laying the groundwork for athletes to return for workouts, so there’s clearly an intent to move forward. We even had Gene Smith suggesting Ohio State could play games in front of limited crowds. I find Smith’s statements to be, uh, perhaps too optimistic.
Brian: They're going to try because they've backed themselves into a corner where all money must be spent immediately so it looks like these athletic departments aren't wildly profitable and no one has a reserve. Except Georgia.
Ace: Plus they lost the NCAA basketball tournament, which is a massive pile o’ money.
Seth: I imagine everybody's having sober budget meetings right now.
Ace: Smaller schools are already cutting sports. Unfortunately, there’s not really a good way to sell off the unnecessary pieces of the lavish facilities everyone’s built to launder their profits. Not a big market for indoor waterfalls at the moment.
Brian: Put your Lockers From Space on craigslist maybe?
Ace: [greg dooley has logged on]
media day or live auction? [Fuller]
Seth: A lot of that pay-immediately money goes to the huge staffs athletic departments carry. They are also the most dischargeable. Which means this conversation is about trying to save peoples' jobs.
Ace: The NCAA literally dispersed the emergency backup fund in the year or two leading up to when they actually needed it. Everyone spent the money.
Brian: It feels like college sports is steaming right at an iceberg, everyone knows it's there, and they're having tea while looking in a different direction. And there are three guys who are planning to shoot up the iceberg, do a flip, and be legends.
Seth: So they're going to play football, because the alternative is the iceberg.
Brian: Football is the iceberg!
Ace: Yeah, football at any point in 2020 feels like a very bad idea.
Seth: I thought it was making zero money in 2020.
Ace: Both are bad but one doesn’t kill people.
[After THE JUMP: icebergs everywhere.]
Brian: This is a Korean study about a call center outbreak:
There was one infected person who sat in the top area.
Ace: There’s another study that traces a massive number of COVID-19 cases in South Korea to one fitness class. Working out together is the worst possible thing to do if you’re trying to prevent the spread of this.
Seth: Singing together is worse. So "The Victors" is out.
Brian: And the US lockdown has been halfass and is moving into a quarter-ass period.
Been playing around with FT's data for an article I'm working on.
— Jeremy TEST/TRACE/ISOLATE Konyndyk (@JeremyKonyndyk) May 22, 2020
This stat blew my mind.
Italy and Spain had among worst outbreaks in Europe. But by day 80, Italy was down 80% from peak, Spain was down 93%.
US (top line in chart) at same point is down only 28% from peak. pic.twitter.com/TC70RCGAD7
Ace: The idea of social distancing at a football game is laughable, too. Sure, you can sit apart in the stands if you limit the crowds, but how are you managing the lines to get in? What about the concessions and the bathrooms? It’s a logistical nightmare.
Seth: Ingress and egress. Outside the stadium.
Brian: That's a separate issue from whether football can be played at all, IMO.
Ace: Yeah, then there’s the issue of even getting the teams together. Players are currently spread across the country. Testing capability is limited at best. Schools aren’t necessarily bringing their students back. Even getting to the point of being able to practice together seems like an enormous hurdle. Then you get to the notion of players working out in close quarters during a pandemic.
Seth: So the one thing the colleges have going for them is if they're open they're going to be controlling the student population.
Brian: I have serious doubts about how much schools can police house parties.
Ace: Same.
Brian: These are young, fit people and some of them have chosen to go to Michigan State.
decisions were made [Patrick Barron]
Seth: They're going to have widespread testing. They're going to have contact tracing. The players are getting three tests a week and the student body is getting one a week, and their temperatures taken when they enter every buildings. They're also going to lock down the campuses. It won't make it 100% safe, but might make it workably safe?
Ace: Wait… they’re going to have all that?
Seth: I'm supposing.
Ace: That’s a big supposing. Particularly on a timeline that’d keep the season on track.
Seth: The season's not going to be on track; I doubt they play a game before October 1st. But I think it's reasonable that a major university can accomplish with its population what South Korea or Germany can with theirs.
Brian: Okay but some of these major universities are Rutgers.
Ace: We also need to establish that, as a country, we are not in the same place as those countries.
Seth: As a country no. As a university campus, if they're going to be open, they HAVE to be.
Ace: Also, instead of acknowledging that, we’re on the brink of a lot of states opening up for business again. You can’t untie the campus from the country. The students are scattered around said country. How do you possibly ensure safety while bringing students back to the dorms in this environment? They need to answer that before even thinking about football.
Seth: The students are going to come back whether they want them to or not. The landlords aren't releasing them from their leases. I'm glad I'm not in charge of the thing, and I'm sure you're right they need to figure that out. I think they a) will, and b) have no choice but to, because the students will come anyway.
BiSB: Even if it is all possible, we also don't have unlimited resources, so spending that much extraordinary effort on football is tough to justify.
Ace: It’s going to take an incredible amount of resources to get the students back on campus in a way that’s safe. Is it worth it to keep things on schedule when you can do classes online? Football shouldn’t factor into that question.
BiSB: This also assumes that schools are going to trust the least competent school on their schedule.
/glances at Maryland
Ace: That’s three Big Ten East schools we’ve now mentioned as being untrustworthy. Ohio State hasn't yet been one of them.
BiSB: To be fair, I can see Iowa screwing this up.
Seth: This is a good year to say fuck Maryland and fuck Rutgers. Adding overnight travel to any of this is purely out of the question.
Brian: Right, it takes just one screwup and then half your conference is shut down. Even if we elide the moral and ethical implications of having football, on a practical level it seems inevitable that teams are going to get shut down for two or three weeks or a month.
Ace: It’s wild that this feels necessary to say: just one screwup, in this case, can lead to multiple deaths. It's not worth it! It's just not. I say that as someone who loves football and relies on sports happening to make a living.
BiSB: People want football. And they want normalcy. And they often equate the two. But even if there is football, it won't be "normal."
these stands might remain empty for a while [Barron]
Ace: I watched the crowdless UFC fights last week. It was sports. It was also surreal.
Brian: There is an argument that if the prospect of football gets someone to do a good test/trace/isolate regime that might be worth it, since you could then spread that model. You shouldn't have to do that since you have good models but Not Invented Here syndrome is real.
Ace: It sounds great in theory but isolating college students is like herding cats.
BiSB: Aside from "can football be played," there's also the question of "what does the season look like?" Are we talking about some teams playing 4 games and some playing 9 and Rutgers and Maryland playing each other 7 times?
Ace: If you push the season back even a week or two, you’re going to get some hellish weather games, too.
BiSB: (I am not opposed to hellish weather games)
Ace: Fair. It adds to the farce, though.
Seth: I think you have to start with no football in September. At least give the students a month on campus with their security protocols before throwing them at each other. Throw out all the Michigan at Washington games now.
Ace: But are they practicing during that time? It’d pose a lot of the same danger as actual games but you can’t start a season without some sort of training camp.
Brian: I think that is what it looks like. Certain teams don't play or barely play. Many games are cancelled. Conference titles are impossible to determine.
Ace: Rutgers wins the Big Ten by flagrantly avoiding social distancing measures and refusing to forfeit games.
Seth: This would hardly be the first weird-ass season in cfb history. We talk about 1918 but there were the WWII years as well under severe travel restrictions. There were intramural (e.g. freshmen vs sophomores) games for a month before any games were played. Honestly the least interesting thing to me about football in 2020 would be who wins it.
Ace: There were a lot of unnecessary deaths in 1918 because we’ve had a literal century since then to better understand concepts like germ theory. Meanwhile, world wars aren’t contagious.
Brian: "Is this a good idea?"
No.
"Is this probably happening anyway?"
Yes.
Ace: Yeah. Doing some half-assed season seems like the worst possible compromise.
Seth: I'm just saying you don't need a precise number of games versus these precise opponents to have a year of football feel like one.
BiSB: If you are suggesting the NCAA would avoid a worst possible compromise, I have news.
Ace: I'd do no such thing.
Brian: Given our luck the only game that gets played is OSU-Michigan and it's 70-15.
BiSB: We looked good in the first quarter, though.
Ace: Cancel the whole goddamn thing right now.
Seth: FWIW Notre Dame is desperately looking for opponents to meet their NBC contract. That tells you where the schools' minds are at. They're going to do this.
Ace: They’re going to try. I’m not sure they’re going to succeed.
Brian: I can't imagine the depths of weird a Michigan-ND game during a pandemic would reach.
BiSB: Oh god, the Michigan/Indiana Pandemic Game.
Ace: We haven’t yet mentioned that this comes at a time when the NCAA’s position on amateurism is weaker than ever. Justifying any games is going take a high-wire act and we may see players refuse. I think most guys want to play but it’d only take one incident to spark something.
Seth: I have a small idea of the temperature of the players; some might refuse, and damn any school that doesn't grant that, but you're right the guys want to play.
BiSB: There's also about 73 types of political implications to all of this, which is going to be oh so much fun to wade through.
Ace: Dancing Through a Minefield: Sportswriting in 2020
Brian: The Athletic has a survey of 45 players out today:
Almost 80 percent of players surveyed were comfortable returning to campus even if their fellow students were not allowed to do the same. Most universities have already elected to utilize online learning for summer sessions but are wrestling with how to manage an on-campus experience they intend to offer in the fall.
“If only athletes are on campus, it would not feel like our health is a priority,” said a Power 5 offensive lineman. “With adequate testing available, I am not worried about the return to campus. My biggest concern is what will happen if and when a player tests positive.”
Said a Power 5 quarterback: “I wouldn’t be concerned unless the numbers of cases suddenly went back up.”
On a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being extremely uncomfortable and 5 being extremely comfortable, zero players said that they would be extremely uncomfortable. Only three rated their comfort level with a return as a 2.
I don't know how that shifts if someone's QB gets hospitalized. COVID is weird as hell.
BiSB: Yep, there's gonna be a lot of "I ate the whole pizza" excuses.
Seth: I don't know that Alabama would sit their QB if he tested positive. That's the thing that scares me about this.
BiSB: You're telling me teams are going to sit their best player, who may be asymptomatic, from a big game? Neeeeeeeeever happen.
Seth: The fact is somebody's offensive lineman will test positive, the rest of the OL room will be put into quarantine for 14 days, and as the Brady Hoke study demonstrated you can't play football without an offensive line.
Ace: We also haven’t mentioned that, while the players are generally in lower-risk groups—which is a term I don’t love throwing around given the severity of the illness and the reports of long-term complications in people who’ve recovered—the coaches and other staffers are often very much not in the same category. Coaches have money and power and don’t necessarily have to do this.
Brian: Yeah, this post-distancing outbreak amongst Bryant-Denny construction workers bodes unwell.
Seth: This would maybe be the dumbest or greatest idea ever: what if we play the season without coaches?
Ace: Michigan tried that in 2014.
BiSB:
Seth: One issue with removing coaches: Penn State probably wins the Big Ten.
Ace: I think we’ve concluded that moving ahead with a season in most any form is a terrible idea that’s going to happen anyway?
Seth: I'm interested to hear everyone's ideas for what the hell it looks like.
BiSB: Our predictions?
Ace: They don’t play it. It’s too hard to justify. If they try, something happens in the leadup—namely, positive tests—that nixes the whole thing.
Brian: Games are now dance-offs. Dennis Norfleet re-gains eligibility on a technicality and we win the national title.
Seth:
- Testing and tracing to the moon
- Only essential staff.
- Students only in the stadium, with some insane plan to get everyone in and out.
- Only nearby games are played, some schedule holes replaced with Toledo/Notre Dame
- Advertising in the Big House because it will save some jobs and at this point who really gives a shit so long as they burn the AllState nets at the end of the season.
- Many games canceled.
BiSB: The season starts more or less on time, but generally without fans and with some significant games canceled. Things go somewhat normally for a while, but a few positive tests here and there blow holes in rosters, and then knock out whole games. Eventually the thing takes on too much water, and the season gets scrapped by mid-October. Scott Frost claims a National Championship.
Ace: Unless we get the dance-off, even our best-case scenarios don’t sound very good.
BiSB: Replace football with zorb football. QED.
Ace: Fast-track a license for NCAA 21 and play the season virtually, this is not a joke. Each team gets to nominate their best PS4 player.
Seth: People are going to die this year. I don't say that callously, or advocating for anything, but as a simple fact. They're going to screw things up, and people are going to die so we could play a football season. This is the most surreal thing of all.
BiSB: That's a true statement most years. Football is, uh, rather unsafe. The threat is just more visible this year.
Ace: It’s a much greater threat this year. Cancel the season so people don’t die in order to provide a brief distraction while lining the pockets of people who are already rich, please.
BiSB: Of course that is the ethically and logically correct answer. On the other hand, SPORTSBALL. So it's impossible to say which is right.
Ace: Sorry, dancing in the minefield again.
Brian: <fin>
but somehow nobody on the football team will have it except a handful of players they want to cut for scholarships *wink, wink*
hell, quarter-assed would be great. this is dime-assed.
Honestly I think administrators are going to try and get teams practicing ASAP and push a few games back/cancel. While they will say it is to mitigate the spread it will actually be enough time to get it to spread through the whole team so all of the players are largely immune but the time play comes around
Power 5 college athletic departments have been caught living pay check to pay check (or football season to football season). The cancelling of the NCAA basketball tournament and the flush of all revenue makes the situation even more desperate.
Gene Smith hasn’t said so as of yet but seat licenses in the horseshoe are going to have a lot of zeros in the cost.
Having a football season this year is a pipe dream. If it even starts, it will end quickly. I hope a sense of reason eventually prevails.
Well so far it hasn't been a pipe dream for SK to have baseball or Germany to have soccer
But they've been wearing the magic cloth masks longer than we have!
Well, they do reduce the spread of the virus by a pretty significant amount, and yes, they've been wearing them longer than the US. But thanks for being an asshole about it by calling them magic cloth masks. Magic cloth belts and magic cloth bags of air save a lot of lives every year in cars, but no one really acts like a twat about those.
" ...people are going to die so we could play a football season."
This makes it sound like those dead people aren't taking the risk willingly. Any coach, player, staffer, journalist, or fan is willingly taking that risk.
You could argue that people playing football could increase transmission rates so that people outside football will get the disease and die, but that effect is almost certainly smaller than, say, the number of uninvolved people who die for football each year because of increased traffic and drinking causing accidents, pollution, and alcohol-related deaths. In other words, people die for football every year, and it really seems like Covid-19 is just a drop in the bucket on top of that.
IMO, with no fans and masks worn by support staff, I’d hope that we can have outdoor gatherings of less than 500 people.
there is risk in everything we do. The goal it NOT to make sure no one ever dies of this or any other disease. It’s to make sure the health system maintains its ability to treat people and to make sure the disease doesn’t spread so fast that work places can’t staff & people generally feel safe enough to live their lives close to normally.
avoid super spreader events like having more than 1000 people gather in any way, avoid indoor gatherings of more than 100 or so. Wash hands entering and exiting every venue/room.
Exactly if not getting anyone killed is the goal of society than why aren't we lowering speed limit to 20 mph, forcing drivers to wear helmets, eliminating alcohol, tobacco and even sugar?
Those changes would have UNBELIEVABLE effects on death in our society. The reason we aren't making these very simple changes is because lowering death rates isn't the top priority in society. May sound cold but it's the truth cause if it was it be a much different world.
Great points. Moreover, studies show that 8 to 10% of fans in the stands are legally drunk. Some of them will drive home after the game in no condition to drive and unfortunately some will get into accidents. Even some of the sober spectators will get into accidents driving home.
Anyone using the same logic as the quote you highlighted could argue that people already were dying for decades so we could play a football season. Passing the responsibility of all risk off on the sport itself.
Is it possible that less people will die if we play the season taking the precautions you mentioned, but with no fans in the stands to drive home drunk?
Let’s say there is never a vaccine for Covid-19. Hypothetically. Is football never played again? Do colleges never open again? It is crazy to me that people are still talking in these terms.
The point of vaccinations is basically to establish artificial herd immunity. At some point, any pandemic creates natural herd immunity...
Not if we take active steps not to allow it to.
Yep. It's time to end the lock-downs. Shelter/protect the elderly and those with comorbidity issues. Everyone else wash your damn hands and wear a mask in public! Don't panic every time someone dies. Get to herd immunity (slowly thanks to hand washing, sanitizing and mask wearing) and then life can return to normal.
Ask Sweeden how that's going. They now have the highest death toll per capita and a recent study suggests they haven't even started developing herd immunity. This virus is something we haven't seen before.
I do think with masks and cleaning we can do more than we are to open up, but otherwise it is still dangerous. I have had mild asthma my entire life and take a daily inhaler. I play sports, work out, have never been hospitalized....does that mean I have a comorbidity and need to shelter?
1 - We need more tests
2 - We need people to be willing to be decent humans and wear masks and social distance as we relax some restrictions. (We are still locked down in my state and yesterday I saw three moms with 8 toddlers playing on a playground together like it was 1999.)
3 - We need more effective treatments (which will probably happen before a vaccine)
4 - We need a vaccine
AC - Where are you getting your information on Sweden? From what I'm seeing their position hasn't changed much. They are well behind Belgium, Spain, UK and Italy. Moderately worse off than USA (289 vs 380 per million).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
The jury is still out on Sweden. It's all about the end game which is (probably) a long way off.
I saw that stat they mentioned on the news. I think it was just for the last 7 days.
That's correct, but that's to be expected given their current strategy vs others. The only reason they're doing better than Italy, Spain, etc. on a cumulative basis is because those countries were hit very hard before any measures went into place.
Also, Belgium's numbers are highly inflated because they're being super liberal about what they're calling COVID death: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/22/841005901/why-belgiums-death-rate-is-so-high-it-counts-lots-of-suspected-covid-19-cases
I am not sure what you want parents with toddlers to do man. We aren’t going to sit there and watch our kids rot away, that isn’t going to happen. Children need developmental opportunities with other children to function. It isn’t optional. We don’t have a pause button we can push, the lack of any form of social/developmental opportunities for children at the 4-7 year old range right now is a non-starter. They are the most vulnerable among us and they are being ignored. We are not going to sit there and watch and entire generation of children get totally brain fucked. The CDC just revised their guidelines and said it doesn’t even really spread surface to surface. Yes, we are going back to the playground, police tape or no police tape so you might as well take it off now.
"Shelter/protect the elderly and those with comorbidity issues."
If you can assume Kaiser is a reasonable source, that's a shitload of people:
37.6%!
Now, those people could go to a well-spaced barbecue or happy hour outside without having to worry too much. Maybe even a football game. Church? Choir practice indoors? Probably not:
https://www.livescience.com/covid-19-superspreader-singing.html
As long as you avoid an aerial assault (too much virus in too little time), it seems that you'll be fine. Also, hand washing is very yesterday:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-covid-spreads.html
I've yet to see anything suggesting that cloth masks are good for anything other than preventing people from Barney Gumble-style coughs / sneezes. The air still largely gets in and out without much filtering. I think history may judge them harshly.
A link in your link seems to contradict you.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html
Cover your mouth and nose with a cloth face cover when around others
- You could spread COVID-19 to others even if you do not feel sick.
- Everyone should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public, for example to the grocery store or to pick up other necessities.
- Cloth face coverings should not be placed on young children under age 2, anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the mask without assistance.
- The cloth face cover is meant to protect other people in case you are infected.
- Do NOT use a facemask meant for a healthcare worker.
- Continue to keep about 6 feet between yourself and others. The cloth face cover is not a substitute for social distancing.
Literally every state is in the midst of re-opening. So we (thankfully) aren't trying to stop herd immunity from occurring as you suggest.
We've taken steps such that it'll happen slowly without overwhelming the healthcare system (i.e. such that infection rates hopefully don't get exponential again).
I'm no expert, but from what I've read, the virus's lethality will eventually decrease one way or another. Absolute worst case, it burns up its sphere of influence, so to speak, by killing everyone it can and leaving only those who, for whatever reason, don't suffer from it. Best case, it mutates into a less deadly form. It is not in a virus's interest from a Darwinian perspective to kill its hosts.
Yep, given how little it affects children, it's reasonable to think that within a generation after it's either killed or infected the entire population, it could be far less lethal than even the flu (which kills far more kids).
By then pretty much everyone will experience an initial infection when they are young (like what happens with common cold coronaviruses) and they'll likely develop immune memory that should make them less susceptible during future infections which could entirely offset the risks posed by health issues that develop. Very few people will experience their initial infections at an old age, as opposed to right now when everyone of all ages is experiencing an initial infection for which they have no immune memory.
This is why pandemics of this sort become less lethal over time. It's why natives that are exposed to viruses for the first time get ravaged the first pass through the population, even though the population that gave it to them may have barely even been affected by them.
The Spanish Flu killed many more people in the second wave than the first wave.
I can't tell who is responding to whom anymore, but yes. I didn't mean to suggest that this would necessarily be a fast or not-terrible process. But it does seem safe to say that our current relationship to the virus will not forever be what it is now.
No, that was still the first "wave", in the sense that it was still giving people their first infection. Just like this winter will still be the first pass of coronavirus. That'll last a few years until 60%+ percent of the population has been exposed. After that, it'll be far less lethal.
Wish those who think we should cancel the season would address this. You can't just quit living life. You figure out how to best live with this going forward and go from there.
"Meanwhile, world wars aren’t contagious."
But aren't they? End of WWI leads directly to and is a cause of WWII.
End of WWII leads directly to and is a cause of the Cold War.
End of the Cold War leads directly to and is a cause of the War on Terror.
Sorry for being pedantic.
Ha! Wars are also super spreader events. Back in the day when only a few people left their towns there would always be a major disease after a war, as everybody got to share what they've gotten from living next to animals. The 1918 one spread through soldiers initially.
You know who has a leg up on this? Ohio State, because they already sequester their athletes from the student body.
Or maybe it works the other way around. An Ohio State University had an advantage because its students didn't actually have to go to classes, but now that will be true for everyone.
I think the most reasonable answer is that they will try to play and no one knows if it will work. Given how political this virus has become in all aspects, I think people have lost sight of the fact that it is still new and we don't know that much about it.
- Does it spread on surfaces or not? CDC is maybe changing its mind...
- Do masks make a difference? Probably, but how much?
- Are there seasonal effects that will reduce transmission over the next few months? Probably a little, but is it enough?
- Do lockdowns make a difference in outbreaks?
- Do lockdowns make a difference in spread through the community?
- What is the real timeline for a vaccine?
- When there is a vaccine, will enough people take it for it to create a herd immunity?
- What is the level and duration of exposure that leads to catastrophic illness vs being asymptomatic?
I think that anyone speaking with certainty one way or the other (we should definitely play or we should definitely not play) is not truly appreciating the uncertainty of this situation.
Hooray for a balanced take on the issue!
These are mostly pretty easy, though.
The CDC isn't changing its mind about spreading on surfaces. It's just saying that it's probably not the primary means of transmission (and I don't think they ever thought it was, they're just confirming that it's probably not the primary). That doesn't change the need to wash hands and disinfect high touch surfaces when necessary.
Masks make a difference, probably not much but given how easy it is to wear them, why wouldn't we?
Warmer, humid air and our ability to be outside more will slow transmission and current estimates are that it'll be a 10% reduction (which is pretty significant when you're talking exponentials).
Do lockdowns make a difference? Abso-freaking-lutely. Everywhere they've been put in place the R0 has gone from 2-3 to around 1 or lower depending on the strictness of the lockdown. It's a very painful tool but very effective, again depending on compliance.
Timeline for a vaccine is a tough one. I think we should plan for there never to be one (i.e. plan for how best to live with the virus and get to natural herd immunity in a safe way, because why not plan for the worst in this respect?).
The last question isn't really practical. It's about more than duration of exposure, it's about intensity of exposure and many other factors that aren't useful in practice. In general the longer the duration of exposure the more likely you are to get an "infectious dose." And the higher the intensity, the lower the time of exposure needed (i.e one big sneeze could be enough when it might otherwise take a close 30 minute conversation with no coughs or sneezes). But even if you know the exact formula needed to get sick, there's no way to know what risk any given environment poses. So wear masks to reduce intensity and social distance to reduce time in proximity is about all you can do.
I don't think any of this has any bearing on whether to play football or not. That's simply a question of risk tolerance. Are we willing to have football, which is just a game, knowing that it'll put player lives at a small risk and coach/support staff lives at a moderate risk? That's what it boils down to. But since almost everyone involved is VERY willing to take those risks, I don't see why they wouldn't give it a go, but definitely without fans.
Not making money kills people too.
Calling it now: For the games that do end up getting played, I foresee schools covering their bleachers with GIANT whole-section seat covers with some form of messaging, be it school logos or advertisements.
I live in Georgia and have a pretty good pulse on the political and university thought process. There is a zero percent chance there is not football here in the fall. Given the realities of the situation, whether it makes it to November/December is a better discussion and more up in the air. Especially since this will get a lot worse in the Winter.
Who says it will get worse in winter? (Although it probably will.)
For every positive slant (i.e. "It will go down dramatically in summer") we get the standard "we don't know that for sure" rebuke. But it's a 100% certainty that it will come back in winter because...?
COVID-19 (aka SARS-2) may go the same route as SARS-CoV which essentially just disappeared. Or it may follow the flu and be here FOREVER. If it's here FOREVER, are we going to turtle every time it flares up? Or will we wash our hands, cover our mouths when coughing/sneezing, and get on with our lives?
There is no cure for the flu. No cure for SARS. No cure for H1N1. No cure for HIV. Cancer. Diabetes. Etc. What makes us certain there will ever be a cure for COVID-19?
And vaccines that are safe may or may not be developed. But even if one (or more) are that still doesn't fully eliminate the problem. (i.e. FLU.)
We need to move on. The narrative needs to change or people are going to be living in fear versus living with common sense.
BTW - I wonder if the govt will MANDATE a vaccination if one becomes available. Or make it difficult for anyone who doesn't have immunity via vaccine or recovery? (i.e. Immunity passports)
PS - I'll continue wearing a mask in public as a courtesy to others.
This is not the same as those other diseases.
- Flu, we have vaccines, far less fatal, probably less contagious
- i don't know shit about sars or h1n1..
- HIV, wear a condom its far far far less contagious, we have treatments that make it no longer fatal, read recently some promising research into a cure
- Cancer, not contagious
- Diabetes, not contagious, caused mostly by diet (type 2), can be reversed by diet.
- covid19, highly contagious, fatal enough to kill a lot of people, not fatal enough to burn itself out, very little in the way of treatment yet, no vaccine, no cure.
One of these things is not like the others. Yeah it might mutate into a benign common cold, we might get a vaccine, we will learn better ways to treat it, but that doesn't mean right now we should say fuck it and let it infect everyone in the country.
SARS is most contagious when you are most symptomatic, which is how they were able to shut it down. It was much more risky to medical workers because people were coming into hospitals very sick and very contagious. A small amount of social distancing was able to snuff it out and keep it contained.
Covid is most contagious BEFORE you get symptoms. Therefore you will have spread it before you know.
H1N1 is much less severe and there is a vaccine as part of the flu shot that is at least somewhat effective.
Covid is most contagious BEFORE you get symptoms. Therefore you will have spread it before you know.
Wait, what? I am unable to find anything that substantiates this claim. Can you provide a legitimate link? I'd like to see this. Up to now it's been a lot of "guesswork". The CDC just recently said it is not likely to be passed from surfaces. All of the sanitizing that's being done in plants, etc are doing minimal good. Or so we think today!
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-covid-spreads.html
The virus does not spread easily in other ways
COVID-19 is a new disease and we are still learning about how it spreads. It may be possible for COVID-19 to spread in other ways, but these are not thought to be the main ways the virus spreads.
- From touching surfaces or objects. It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose, or possibly their eyes. This is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, but we are still learning more about this virus.
I would argue that sneezing and coughing (primary source of spread [today]) are definitely symptoms.
Yep, according to this long but very interesting article by Atul Gawande on how to manage risk going forward, it's most contagious before symptoms become apparent. I think the case for why this is unique from SARS and other recent epidemics is pretty clear.
https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/amid-the-coronavirus-crisis-a-regimen-for-reentry
"Studies now consistently indicate that infectivity starts before symptoms do, that it peaks right around the day that they start, and that it declines substantially by five days or so. This is the pattern we see in influenza. But it’s the opposite of the pattern we saw with the coronavirus that caused China’s SARS outbreak eighteen years ago."
You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and saying because we might see deaths, we have to do things your way, and everyone else can go fuck themselves. Well, allow me to humbly suggest that you're not always right, that there are ramifications to going your way - just as yes, there are ramifications to going the other way, but see --- there's precedent to going the other way, and we'd have to learn all the ways going your way hurts us. Worse, the things we can already see about going your way hurt us in the long term WORSE than the ramifications of letting healthy people out, and protecting those at greatest risk.
What's the one thing that's not like the other? Trying to shut down a country and make a highly social animal be anti-social for MONTHS, and expect no harm to come of it. That's unlike rational thinking anyway.
Jonesy -
One of these things is not like the others.
I wasn't comparing COVID to Cancer, HIV or Diabetes. Merely pointing out that despite killing millions (and spending billions) we've never gotten a cure. As for SARS/H1N1, those are the most similar/recent pandemics to COVID. COVID is also referred to as SARS-CoV2.
Yeah it might mutate into a benign common cold, we might get a vaccine, we will learn better ways to treat it, but that doesn't mean right now we should say fuck it and let it infect everyone in the country.
I never said "fuck it". Just recommending we manage it better.
(Debates typing something he is sure will get negged. Goes forward anyway...)
People will continue to die from this disease - with or without a football season. Even when/if there is a vaccine there will still be deaths. You cannot compare it to previous "pandemic" events as significant advances have been made since then to treat and control disease - just as increased mobility of the populace and a more urban society have increased the potential for spread. Worth noting that many of the casualties of Covid-19 would not have been affected back then--- because they would not have been alive to see it without the medical advances of the past 100 years.
Football is not important in the biggest picture but the issues you cite have implications far beyond whether games will be played in empty stadiums this fall.
If it is not safe to have football practices and players on campus, then it probably is not safe to have campuses open. If campuses are not safe that must extend to most other workplaces etc. This is not a situation that can be sustained into the latter part of 2020.
It is much more realistic in my opinion to work toward a "new normal" and minimize exposure in all environments and workplaces while still restricting the most non-essential activities - which unfortunately would include having 100k congregate for a sporting event in my opinion (thought not necessarily the games themselves)
No matter how they try to phrase the questions in that survey, it is clear that nearly all players want to get back to football as much or more than we do as fans. We just have to find a way to make that happen - this will not be another example of "the man" exploiting the players for $$ unless you feel the players have to be protected from themselves -- which would raise more serious questions of personal freedoms and responsibility in society etc.
TLDR -- IMHO You guys are way too much of a buzzkill on this topic. I am not asking for "early RichRod hope" levels of optimism but maybe at least year 2 Hoke era "so you're saying there's a chance".
I was thinking this same thing, and contemplated whether to post or not...so thanks for taking that one :)
I agree with you on all your points. This is a new normal, not an ideal normal, but a new normal and we all have to adapt. I dont know what that should look like for sports but that time is going to come soon and everything we do and decisions made by people with larger checks than all of us is going to be a test, learn and adapt approach.
Through my company we have been fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to speak with a handful of decorated Navy seals (on zoom calls) over the last 15+ weeks during all of this....and I really attach to how they preach it. When shit hits the fan in war, or a pandemic, you have three types of people
1. People who dive and wait for the storm to pass, but in the end this attitude always makes it worse as their insight to what is happening around them is little to none.
2. People who survive, taking little and minimized risks and ride the storm out but are aware of the threats around them
3. People who thrive, they asses the situation for the least risk, they look for any possible threats but they DO take action, the push forward, test and learn.
Im not advocating for sports to rush to anything, because you are right mgoblog owners, people can die... this virus is awful. But if we want to shut it all down, and cower in the corner, I see that as just as much of a threat to society..which could possibly lead to bigger unknown risks.
I honestly cant stand the people who just preach depressing shit 24/7 , world is ending, nothing is going back to normal, etc...i get it, all this sucks big time...but part of me is like STOP, pick your head up, adapt and take this head on.
While I agree that there is a middle ground where we carefully ease back into a new normal while we give science time to catch up.....what gives me any confidence that the US is capable of doing this? Wearing masks is now political. Contact tracing by a health agency is an invasion of privacy to many. We sadly live in a society without a middle ground.
I think wearing masks, proving ample testing, providing ample hand sanitizer, limiting the size of groups, and leveraging contact tracing allow us to open up. We're seeing that in other countries around the world. Yet in the US we are lagging behind on all of those things.
Take away people 70+, take away people with outlier conditions, what's the morbidity of this disease? I don't know precisely, but it's low. Very low. Shockingly low. Unremarkable like, "what disease?" kind of low.
You are pushing a million dollar solution to a five dollar problem. By all means protect those that need protection. By all means educate the public, and find ways to help protect everyone, but a healthy college kid gets this virus, manages not to pass it to a grandparent or someone with lung issues, the odds are even those they give it to don't have much effect... Will there be losers, yes, and if I could save everyone in the world, I would - but we have cars, and we risk flu, and we smoke, and we do lots of things that incur risk. Life can not and should not stop because of risk.
Protect those at high risk, learn more, work towards a cure. If (as is by this point clear) the risk is entirely manageable for those in, say the college age group, then get on with life.
"By all means protect those that need protection."
If you're suggesting that one third of the people in this country that are at high risk should bunker themselves inside, that's not at all a good solution. It's also more costly than containment measures that could give them the confidence to have some semblance of a normal life because taking them out of the economy is extremely expensive from a production and consumption perspective.
Those measures he's proposing are the five dollar solution. They're very inexpensive relative to removing a third of the population from the economy and then pumping trillions into propping it back up. That's literally the trillion dollar solution.
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