Too dangerous a season.
Saturday, August 8th, 2020
I read this afternoon the Mid American Conference—that’s the MAC—have decided to cancel the fall football season, or, to put a positive spin on it, they’re going to try to do football next spring.
I don’t really follow the leagues and the teams and so on—I got confused when the Big Ten became an association of …what is it? 12? 31? A lot of teams. And the Big East? Not particularly East. And that virtual first down line thing, that’s just wizard magic of some sort. It’s not even there!
But the MAC was and is the league, or team grouping, or conference, or whatever that Ohio University plays in, and Ohio University is one of the two schools I attended. (The other had zero inter-school sports. I think there was some frisbee and volleyball.)
Several authoritative tweets I stumbled across said that this decision will likely put pressure on the bigger-deal conferences with larger schools to just call the whole thing off this year. I would suppose the pressure from the players themselves would be a big factor, but when you factor the massive economic impact this football has in big schools all over, I’m sure there are a lot of secret conference calls where executives and administrators are saying “well, let’s just put on the table—how many new cases would be OK to play through? How many hospitalizations? How many deaths?”
Yee gads.
We heard from our family who lives in Athens, Georgia (they have a big school and a big football program, perhaps you’ve heard) that UGA continues to plan for a season of some kind. They are going to require mask wearing in the enormous outdoor arena that is Sanford Stadium.
It just all seems so desperately experimental. And again, the test subjects are the kids we all send off to school, and the families they come home to. Us, in other words.
