We Know You Want To Play
In the aftermath of the Big Ten's decision to postpone, and likely cancel, the 2020 season there's been a cottage industry in open letters, that least persuasive of persuasive devices. Various groups of Big Ten parents from Iowa to Ohio State to Nebraska and now Michigan have sent strongly worded letters to the league office. Justin Fields has started an online petition.
Some of these letters are Big Mad: the Iowa one drops "appalling" and then "infuriating," "unacceptable," and "offensive" right in a row. Some are more measured: the Michigan one does not read like it was written by that one guy on the message board everyone rolls their eyes at. But they all have one thing in common. These letters have a zero percent chance of changing the Big Ten's stance.
This is a league that added Rutgers and Maryland solely to bilk people in East Coast states who don't care about college sports out of a dollar each month. The Big Ten likes money. The Big Ten wants money. The Big Ten just decided to forgo nine digits of revenue after consulting with a large pile of doctors and lawyers.
An open letter telling the Big Ten things they are already acutely aware of—a lot of people like football—because that's where the money comes from is among the more pointless exercises I've yet seen.
[After THE JUMP: the beatings will continue until exponential math is understood]
Complaints about transparency are bullshit processism that I, a local politics knower, have seen over and over again as NIMBYs try to challenge any and every change with endless appeals to "community" input. The community they are talking about is always unrepresentative and always mad, because people who think a new building is okay don't show up.
Asking for the exact data that caused the Big Ten to cancel at a time when knowledge about COVID-19 shifts daily is a bad faith argument. They told you why they canceled: they don't think it's safe. It's a global pandemic. They don't want to make it worse.
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Now, a brief aside about exponents.
Exponential math is unintuitive. I am a person who has taken the math classes and had embarrassing work experiences when my code was theta(not real good buddy)—in human-speak, when I'd written some computer code that scaled exponentially and thus froze the app as soon as it got asked to anything sort of big. And even I was like "really?" when a study came out claiming that instituting distancing measures a week earlier would have more than halved NYC-area deaths:
It is hard to wrap your head around numbers that act like that. But when you do it you reach one of two conclusions:
- if the virus is still containable every case avoided counts
- if we're completely boned there's not going to be a season anyway
I am in camp #2 since the US has already had 5.5 million cases—a quarter of the world's total. I do not think people understand the likelihood that this fall is already shot to hell.
What if the answer to "why can students come back to classes if we can't have football?" is "let's not do either"?
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The United State has the worst outbreak in the world primarily because people have not taken coronavirus seriously. Open letters complaining about the sacrifice you have to make but don't wanna are exactly why we're here. Football parents complaining that their kids should be able to take a risk fail to generalize that risk. CFB will not be in a bubble, cannot be in a bubble.
Therefore every infection on a football team is another vector in the world. Another reason schools will not be open this fall. Another reason daycare is going to be a disaster. Another way for someone old or vulnerable to die. The Big Ten could have God come down from the clouds and personally guarantee that every Big Ten football player will come through the season in perfect health and the league could still convincingly argue that shutting sports down was the moral and ethical thing to do.
If you want to do something useful in the hopes of a spring season, advocate for the development of a protocol that uses the recently approved point-of-contact saliva test as a way to have safe football—for everyone, not just athletes—in the spring. Advocate for a nationwide testing system that will get the virus under control. Quit wishing things were one way.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:51 PM ^
This argument about the degree of shutting down is weird to me.
First off, there's no evidence that "herd immunity", even the largely-unsupported 20% you see people trot out sometimes, happened in Arizona and some of these other states. Heck, there's little evidence it hit in NYC, by far the densest and hardest-hit location in the US. Maybe in some small portions of the city, but even then that's somewhat tenuous.
Second, Arizona implemented a pretty significant pivot from their earlier position - cities and counties could now require mask usage, closed gyms, bars, movie theaters, and other places where people tended to transmit the disease, and allowed other local-level restrictions to be put in place. That's pretty significant, especially since it stopped the very actions that tended to lead to groups of people being in close proximity of each other for extended periods of time with limited mask coverage. Yes, they didn't have to deploy as many draconian measures as NYC; my counter is they had 3 months of warning about what could happen and still spit into the wind the whole time; the fact they still have pretty significant breakouts is an indictment of their approach, not something to be excited about.
As for Hawaii, yes they've had an uptick of about 1400 cases in the past 7 days. Of course, that's not nearly as bad as Idaho, a similarly-sized red state that had almost 3,000 cases in the past 7 days. I agree that constant lockdown isn't the answer, but any option beyond "wait for herd immunity/vaccine" requires a concerted effort by citizens along with local, state, and federal officials, and we simply haven't shown any consistency on that front.
August 17th, 2020 at 4:26 PM ^
The virus spreads person-to-person, and since even asymptomatic people can spread it, there is no mechanism by which the virus will just "stop spreading" without preventative measures. Specifically, there is no "local community immunity" that can develop without 80+% of the community catching the virus. Everything we know about the virus (and all other viral progression models) tells us that.
There's a reason that Europe is quarantining travelers from the US, and that New York is quarantining Florida folks.
August 17th, 2020 at 8:08 PM ^
We also had Big Gretch waddling through a protest. Somehow standing up for some rights fueled a pandemic and others didn’t?
August 17th, 2020 at 1:13 PM ^
The US reminds me of the person who goes to the gym for a week, and then gets mad that they don't have a six pack, and gives up.
Americans have tried so little, and are convinced that since our half-assed effort didn't make Covid go away, nothing will, so we might as well just go back to life as usual.
August 17th, 2020 at 1:20 PM ^
Maybe we need to implement the University of Minnesota Spankalogical Protocol.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:06 PM ^
The gym example has been in my mind too. Most of America never really tried hard to quarantine and even when we did, a lot of people immediately got fed up with it and now the position is basically that it isn't that bad and we're just gonna go on with life. I agree that it seems some of the earliest projections for the virus did not turn out as bad as we thought, but it's still killing about a thousand Americans a day and now America is tired of trying and a big portion probably won't want the vaccine so I guess we're just gonna let it run its course. Hope no one has their hopes up for March Madness
August 17th, 2020 at 5:25 PM ^
Lously Beatniks!
August 17th, 2020 at 5:47 PM ^
And yet some made that half assed effort out to be the greatest trial and tribulation ever faced by humanity.
August 17th, 2020 at 8:20 PM ^
Most of America was sold “two weeks to flatten the curve”.
at this point many Americans are willing to deal with the virus as part of our lives.
So no, we didn’t try to quarantine that hard.
August 17th, 2020 at 1:18 PM ^
But you don't know that fall will be a disaster. I live in the county just north of you. My three children have been in day care since June 22. It is run by the school district and has a maximum of 10 per class. It has gone extremely well. No infections and they are not wearing masks in class. The infection rate is lower, but we are not living in a bubble. My wife and I have been able to work and my children are safely socializing with their peers.
Our district is bringing students into the classroom four days a week. I fully support this. As does the CDC and the AAP. Let's see if it works. The alternative in households in which both parents work full time is untenable. How are we supposed to also manage remote learning for our children (three age 10 and under in my case)? It is not feasible unless we hire someone to come into our house. Let's not even pretend it will work effectively otherwise.
I agree with Harbaugh. Moving forward with football is a hard decision. So is getting kids into classrooms. I also think both of these is the right decision. There isnt much hope until a vaccine is widely distributed if we don't keep trying to safely keep a functional society.
August 17th, 2020 at 1:23 PM ^
But you don't know that fall will be a disaster. I live in the county just north of you. My three children have been in day care since June 22. It is a maximum of 10 per class, but it has gone well. No infections and they are not wearing masks in class. The infection rate is lower, but we are not living in a bubble. My wife and I have been able to work and my children are safely socializing with their peers.
This is one of those things that can go OK for a while and maybe until the virus is over, but it only works because other people are wearing masks and social distancing. And if it goes wrong it's suddenly going to go very very wrong.
There isnt much hope until a vaccine is widely distributed if we don't keep trying to safely keep a functional society.
Every other first world country has shown there are ways to deal with besides vaccines, but for some reason we refuse to learn from them. Because 'Murica.
August 17th, 2020 at 1:36 PM ^
We failed as a country and this (among many other far more horrible and important things) is the price.
August 17th, 2020 at 1:43 PM ^
Ah the classic "my one personal experience disproves your whole argument" argument
August 17th, 2020 at 2:18 PM ^
But I will give ptmac the recognition that he presented his virtually worthless personal anecdote much more civilly than the standard "we don't mask/we need to work/our children don't thrive on distance learning" crowd!
So thanks for allowing the convo to continue without a "you people are what's wrong with the world!" a pro-return anti-masker contributed recently!
August 17th, 2020 at 1:59 PM ^
Yeah and maybe if we'd planned for this 4 months ago we'd have a better option than "boy sure hope the fall isn't as bad as it could be!"
Holy shit look past your own nose for 4 seconds.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:13 PM ^
I was told when it gets a little warmer, it will miraculously go away. When 40% of the country believes whatever one person says, despite it being whimsically optimistic at best, bad things will happen.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:24 PM ^
I have heard it said that some people really feel strongly that 40% figure is declining rapidly, due to how many patently disprovable statements have issued forth from that "one person"! And this is coming from some top people, really strong people!
But whadda I know? I voted for Pochahontas!
August 17th, 2020 at 10:06 PM ^
You’d think at this point those people would say, “hey I was wrong, we need to take this seriously” otherwise we are going to be in the same place in the spring. No college football because this will just be a slow burn with tons of unnecessary deaths.
Just fucking admit you idiots fucked up and wear a god damn mask and only go out for essential supplies.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:10 PM ^
You've doused your home and children with gasoline and are bragging about there being no fire right before you light up your congratulatory cigarette.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:52 PM ^
I guess I'm not sure what you're advocating? Doing nothing? For herd immunity to apply you need between 60-80% infected. Even if you assume the actual number of infected people is 5-10x what has been reported (which is optimistic, but within the realm of possibility given by the % positive rates of recent random testing), that still means a shit ton more people need to get infected to achieve herd immunity.
The US population is estimated at a little over 330 million. That means you need 198-264 million infected for herd immunity (if you magically assume everyone who gets infected will maintain persistent immunity for several years). With our 5-10x estimate for actual number of people infected that puts us between 27.4-54.9 million infected so far. So even in the most optimistic case we are only 28% or so to achieving herd immunity, but could be as little as 10% of the way there!
The number of deaths due to COVID is already unconscionable. Opening things back up the way many are advocating will almost guarantee another 500,000+ deaths at a minimum in the US before this is over. All because people want things to magically get back to normal.
August 17th, 2020 at 1:20 PM ^
I'm on the fence here. I was fully on-board with the Big Ten canceling/postponing the season. Bummer no doubt, but understandable. But hearing the backlash from the parents, players and coaches makes me rethink my stance a bit. It could be argued that being under the control of the football program procedures is better for COVID than being at home where there is little control.
I dunno! [insert "your tearing me apart Lisa!" gif]
August 17th, 2020 at 1:55 PM ^
Being under the control of the football program, especially at a place like Michigan, probably is safer than being anywhere else. If every football program operated in a bubble like the one the U of M created, AND you could somehow keep that bubble from breaking when the rest of the students showed up to campus (as happened at Oklahoma), then yes in that artificial world you could argue that football is safer than no football for the players. But aside from the apparent impracticality (again, Oklahoma...) that also further formalizes the notion of having two classes of "students" (those who play football and those who do not), and the NCAA is allergic to facing this reality. So it isn't going to happen.
The real answer, of course, is for the whole student body, or perhaps even the whole freaking country, to adopt the serious attitude toward this situation that Michigan's football program adopted. But quite evidently that's also far too much to ask.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:16 PM ^
Agree with FMH and WB that UofM football could be safe if you do the NBA bubble action, but it completely throws amateurism out the window. Frankly I would be o.k. if the NCAA and all of the colleges said "F it, football is important to America. Online learning for everyone, but football players have a semester off and will play in a bubble." ...but even then it would probably get messed up OSU taking players to crowded tattoo parlors and Louisville taking players to crowded hooker parties.
August 18th, 2020 at 3:21 AM ^
The NCAA had 6 months to devise a plan but they just sat on their hands and did nothing. I feel sorry for the players since they will be exposed to the virus even without football.
August 19th, 2020 at 4:42 PM ^
It's easy to argue that "[t]he NCAA had 6 months to devise a plan but they just sat on their hands and did nothing," because that allows us to blame some faceless group, but the fact of the matter is that the NCAA didn't have much it could do. It is not, and cannot be, the organizing body for the regulation of pubic health, and every state had its own rules on that. It deferred to the conferences, but even they couldn't come up with a workable plan.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:01 PM ^
I won't be the first to express this, but what's really being exposed is that amateurism in college football can't exist. If the athletes weren't "students" first and didn't have to go to school with everyone else, then yeah, they could possibly do the bubble thing and play football. But I'ts not fair to put the rest of the student body in a danger they have no control of in order to play football, which is an inherently very high risk activity for respiratory droplet transmission.
August 19th, 2020 at 4:45 PM ^
If amateurism in college football cannot exist, then college football cannot exist. Colleges have no remit to manage professional football teams. They could spin off the new professional teams, but then it's not college football any more.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:08 PM ^
As I said before, I am quite sympathetic to the players. I don't doubt the players' sincerity or motivations, but it's way bigger than them and relies on so many factors outside of their control. Even assuming they do everything right, if enough other actors on the supply chain don't then you've created more vectors for the virus to spread.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:30 PM ^
That’s kinda the argument: what creates the most vectors? Being under the control of the football program or being at home (with probably less control)?
I’m definitely on the fence here as well. Testing/contact tracing everyday, strict quarantine procedures, and transparent reporting from the football program could (and I stress could) provide greater control over the spread than staying at home.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:15 PM ^
I think the main piece of the "players are safer under control of the program" argument that's missing here is that the B1G didn't postpone the season for the safety of the players, but for the safety of everyone else!
The wave of new cases once students return to campuses will be astronomical. We've already seen plenty of interweb evidence that 18-22 year olds aren't gonna social distance!
To call back only athletes and "bubble" them (or even more damning, only football players) would kill the student-athlete model deader than even the valiant Weekend At Bernie's efforts of most schools could sustain.
So there's the dilemma the conferences face: Scores of thousands of new infections, or shooting the idea that revenue sport athletes are students first right in the head.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:38 PM ^
I'm not trying to belabor the point here, but if students are off campus/at home doing distance learning, then protecting "everyone else" is irrelevant. It does challenge the question of amateurism, though.
Since we are "flattening the curve", new cases in a vacuum don't mean much unless it overloads the system. And I agree that cases will definitely increase if people are on campus, but with a segment of the population that is least risky. I still think there is an argument to be made that being on campus COULD have better control for the student athlete than otherwise. I'll also reiterate that I think canceling/postponing the football season is still the right choice.
August 18th, 2020 at 6:20 PM ^
Since we are "flattening the curve", new cases in a vacuum don't mean much unless it overloads the system.
New cases aren't important in a vacuum, but we don't live in a vacuum. We live among people, and every interaction is a potential vector. More importantly, your statement is a catch-22 - you can't wait until systems are overloaded to do something, because by then you're already way too late. Which means that we have to do something well in advance of that point.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:19 PM ^
It depends on where home is. Dorms are a worse-case scenario, a house in the middle of nowhere the best.
If you could get enough football players from every team in the P5 to agree to permanent quarantine, you could contain it. i.e. once someone visits a non-football player indoors, one you go to a party, restaurant, classroom, you isolate by yourself for 2 weeks. But I feel like thousands of unpaid athletes sticking to that well enough for 3 months is mathematically impossible.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:44 PM ^
What is wrong with your rethinking about having a football season is that it seems inevitable that the bubble will soon burst. Assuming that the football program truly had the virus under control for a couple of weeks, many of the teams we will play don't have the same protocols implemented and have had to suspend practice for 14 days at a time. Even if they did, when students come back it seems almost inevitable that there will be significant spread, not because Michigan didn't come up with good protocols for its students but because the students, for whatever reasons, don't seem to want to play by the rules.
I suspect the problem relates to high school and college kids not being able or willing to do their fair share or perhaps it is a statement about the nation's ability to understand simple math. Regardless, it doesn't reflect well on us as a country.
This pandemic didn't have to happen the way it unfolded in the United States. That it did tells us many things about ourselves that should be unsettling.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:50 PM ^
I agree, the bubble will burst no doubt. To my point above, the bubble bursting MAY not be an issue if the healthcare system can handle it. College students are some of the least susceptible to the adverse affects of COVID. I may be wrong, the campus may be the most rigorous with regards to testing and contract tracing compared to being at home.
The basic premise is to get as many people into the most controlled situation as possible.
August 17th, 2020 at 4:11 PM ^
Living in Ann Arbor and being older although in good health, I'm not as concerned with the "casualties" that occur among the student population although there are many students that have comorbidities that put them at risk. I'm concerned about the community at large which, from what I have observed over the summer, has done a relatively decent job of playing by the rules. There are lots of older folks in town including many older professors and employees of the U of M and they are put at considerably greater risk if CV19 proliferates among students and the students are out in the area around campus which they will most surely do. Students shop at Meijer and Costco just like the rest of us.
August 17th, 2020 at 1:20 PM ^
are you saying i shouldn't trust teenagers who give themselves permanent brain damage playing football in return for the small opportunity to make millions of dollars and give themselves more permanent brain damage at the professional level to make public health decisions?
August 17th, 2020 at 1:42 PM ^
Ron, that sounds like a call to ban football.
August 18th, 2020 at 3:26 AM ^
This is the first step towards a total ban of football. A lot of millennial parents no longer let their children play football. This will have a big effect on the game in the next decade or so. Its just not fun or safe to watch any longer.
August 17th, 2020 at 1:21 PM ^
I think one of your last points about testing is something that I haven't heard much, but makes a lot of sense. When we are at a point where symptomatic and people with direct contacts are still struggling to get quick test results, does it really make sense to use the amount of tests that we are using on sports now?
August 17th, 2020 at 1:51 PM ^
No, it doesn't.
August 17th, 2020 at 2:02 PM ^
40% of test results are so slow that they're rendered useless in the community, so, it probably doesn't matter either way.
August 17th, 2020 at 3:39 PM ^
I just got a test result in 24 hours. I have heard of some people taking weeks to get theirs tho...
Not really sure why, but almost feel like it's regional. I'm fortunate to live in a very Blue state I guess!
August 17th, 2020 at 4:04 PM ^
It seems to be really site dependent. Here in SE MI the Henry Ford system is turning them around in 24 hours where some urgent cares are taking 10 days. My advice is that if you need a test, make sure to find out turn around times before picking a location.
August 17th, 2020 at 1:27 PM ^
Thanks for some sorely needed sanity Bran.
August 17th, 2020 at 1:32 PM ^
I'm just pissed a lot of these states didn't act responsibly but now they get to have football, too? Spoiled brats.
August 17th, 2020 at 1:38 PM ^
Those governors didn’t give a shit about cases and deaths then. Why would they give a shit now?
August 17th, 2020 at 2:25 PM ^
For real. Oklahoma is planning to play with 25%(!) capacity. And I saw images from a packed party at Oklahoma State over the weekend and NBC News said there were 23 cases in a sorority house there. No way that state should be playing football now. That state also held a 6,000 person rally a few weeks ago that literally killed one of the president's friends.
(And I'm pretty sure the idiot governor tested positive for corona after going out to a restaurant a few months ago).
August 18th, 2020 at 3:29 AM ^
The younger people across the country are the ones who got tired not staying at home and have been going to bars, gyms and house parties since May. Most know it will not affect them much and they don't care if us old farts die.
August 18th, 2020 at 6:28 PM ^
Live in Oklahoma, can confirm, we dumb.
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