Wish: if team can't play in Michigan, go play in Florida
Florida recently invited all pro football teams to come to Florida to play and practice:
https://www.newsweek.com/florida-invites-all-professional-sports-play-practice-there-even-those-new-york-1503888
I don't know if it is possible, but --
If Michigan the state or Michigan the university doesn't allow the football team to start going into the gym and practicing, or doesn't allow it to start the season, I wish that the football team would go to Florida to do so.
Get things going in Florida. Come back to Michigan whenever it is that Michigan decides athletes can be on campus.
If U of M doesn't allow players into the gym and to practice, they will be doing it elsewhere anyway. They are probably safer doing it at U of M (or at least under well-funded, well-equipped professional staff guidance) than elsewhere.
I also think that it is ridiculous to have any rule that says, if the campus isn't open to everyone, U of M will ban its athletes from facilities. Regular students can further their field of study online. Athletes can't eat, work out, and play online.
Pick Florida or some other state that is open to it.
I don’t issue have an issue with your opinion. But in reality, if other blue bloods schools to decide to play any consequences Michigan has (if they play) will have them in the same boat. No, I’m not saying if you friend jumps off a bridge that you should too. However, Michigan is going to be put into a box no matter what if the majority of other schools play. I suspect they would lean towards playing in that circumstance if the players were ultimately willing to accept the risks and play.
Maybe this coronavirus is the excuse Michigan needs to leave the B1G.
And do what, exactly, besides appease a fan base that Alex Jones would deem paranoid delusional?
I'm sorry, did you say athletes can't eat or work out at home?
No, I didn't.
Are you kidding? We die for a chance to exhibit that we are better than everyone else. Michigan choosing not to play goes right toward that. Embrace it, my dude.
While I agree in general with your point, we typically die for a chance to talk, not exhibit, that we are better than everyone else. When we do actually exhibit it, it’s usually on small potato things that don’t matter that give us the opportunity to pat ourselves on the back and build the “leaders and best” brand without real costs. I tend to think Prez Schlissel’s comments signaled that students will probably be back in the fall more than anything else, but of course as an added bonus we can all go around trash talking about what moral leaders we are.
If Michigan the state, or the University, decides not to play football this fall (for better or for worse), it will be the equivalent of giving the school the NCAA "death penalty".
Most players will transfer to schools that are playing this fall if they have space. My guess is Michigan would be left with a shell of a roster. Teams would "find space" for an Kwity Paye, Cam McGrone, or Nico Collins.
How would that work with regards to the transfers getting into the school? No doubt other teams would want some of Michigan's players if they had room. At the same time though, UM's players would first have to be accepted into the school to be able to play. If Michigan decides at the end of June, they are not going to play football, would other academic institutions still be accepting transfers for the fall semester in July?
We get it - people want to watch football in the fall and don't care how they get it. And yes, I'm sure the Venn diagram of people demanding the athletes be allowed to come back to campus looks like a circle with those who don't think they should be treated like employees and make money. Got it.
I won't even get into the insanity of sending lots of people from across the country to Florida to work out together in confined spaces.
No, you don't get it.
I, for one, support NIL rights and freedom for players to get paid for them.
I want to watch football, and I do care how I get it.
The more anyone talks about things that 'might' work as a way to get sports running again, the more bonkers the idea seems, to me a least.
I have to imagine that even if Florida is more opened up than Michigan by the fall, the team would still have to be sequestered in a hotel, along with all coaches and support staff, including medical personnel, chefs, the film crew, equipment managers, and the hotel staff. Then, you have to think about the families of all of those people- what happens when one of the hotel workers has a parent at home that tests positive? Or, say, if someone forgets to buy toothpaste (like one of the Bundesliga coaches- except a college football team likely has several times the number of people in and around it than a European football team) and has to go out and then needs to be kept in a different isolation spot for two weeks? It wouldn't take a whole lot to happen before the whole thing falls apart.
The way things look right now- and yes, I know the way things are right now doesn't have anything to do with the way things will look in the fall, but these decisions have to be made pretty soon, and they can't be made based on what we HOPE things will look like in the fall- the idea of playing college football in the fall seems unconscionable to be. I don't see there being a way to realistically keep everyone involved safe. On top of that, (WARNING: unpopular opinion!) the sport exploits its players enough as it is, without throwing a wildly contagious disease into the mix.
Yeah up thread people are saying the players want to play no matter what! And they may want to now, but the systems that will have to be set up might have them rethinking that by mid season, these players will be essentially inmates inside a dorm. They will be confined to their rooms for 3 months only coming out for practice and games. Likely no contact with their families or friends outside the team.
People clamoring for their freedom are going to be denying that to the players. Right now I can go to stores and go to the park and stuff. The players won’t have that luxury.
Right now I can go to stores and go to the park and stuff. The players won’t have that luxury.
This takes the cake for dumbest post of the day. If the players have that luxury right now, they will continue to have that luxury. The only person advocating for their freedoms to be denied is you.
I'm not sure that football works without keeping the players, staff, and everybody who comes in contact with them sequestered though.
I'm not sure what you do after you come back in from going out, but when I get back, the first thing I do is get rid of my mask, then I go spend a minute or so washing my hands. Then I spend a half-hour washing my groceries -to the extent that it's feasible. Then I wash my hands some more. This is all before I give my wife a hug. Same thing when my wife goes out, because we have no idea what we may be tracking into our apartment right now.
What i don't do is go play football with 85 other people.
Every plan I've seen that has sports coming back involves players in a strict quarantine. See the example of the Bundesliga coach who forgot to pack tooth paste and ended up suspended for the year. Yeah not sure what rock you've been living under, but I guess your take totally ignores everything we are hearing from commisioners and players unions about the process for resuming play.
Agreed. We cancelled the annual spring trip. Let's use those funds to get a head start on fall camp by spending a week in Florida.
Or maybe, if Michigan doesn’t seem it safe enough to play, don’t play. The world shouldn’t contort itself so you can watch football. Get some perspective.
I think this is an excellent idea
A lot of people's feelings on this are of course dependent on what they think the danger is.
Several posters here wrongly think that I am not considering that.
If your thought is that horrible things will happen if people don't continue to stay in their homes, yes, playing football sounds like a horrible idea.
If your thought is that at some point very soon people are going to cease staying in their houses regardless, but that it will be OK, then playing football is not a horrible idea. It is just part of life that is going to be resuming.
My background is engineering and science, and I work in biotech, including companies that work on vaccines and infectious-disease diagnostics. I'm not the world's greatest expert, and no one can know the future with 100% certainty on this stuff anyway. But I'm not clueless about this stuff, either. I also have elderly relatives with conditions that put them at high risk, and a child who has been hospitalized in the past for problems with respiratory infections. So I worry about them, and plan to take extra care with them regardless of whether or not the nation starts letting other people live more normal lives again.
I was very worried about SARS-2 initially. Now, we have a lot more data, and in the past several weeks I've started to think, with the changes that are 100% inevitable even without forcing people (more mask use, more care about hand washing, higher risk people being more careful, etc.), SARS-2 might not be drastically worse than other infectious diseases through which the nation operates normally. The death rate is not turning out to be huge, which initially was a real concern. Typical people under 50 are not at high risk. We know some exacerbating factors (obesity, diabetes, age, etc.). It makes it possible for people at higher risk to be very careful on their own. Some treatments might already be working well -- we'll see as anecdotal studies accumulate and more-thorough studies complete, and as biased garbage and obviously stupid test regimens get filtered out. Our hospitals are now way more prepared. Also, if the nation had a mind to do it, we could antibody test people (it's cheap and easy) and be accepting of folks having antibodies to get on with their lives.
My feeling is that if the nation is opening up, such that there are regions feeling it is acceptable to get on with things (and neither you nor I nor even the world's greatest infectious-disease expert has the data to know if that is a wrong move), since you and I as free humans could avail ourselves of that if we choose, so should football players, as free humans, be able to do so.