It is obvious that college football’s leadership structure has failed, but you knew that. Explaining HOW this failure occurred is worth exploring. More precisely, it is important to illustrate the thought processes behind college football’s power brokers and why those thought processes were so obviously inadequate for this particular situation and the solutions it required.
Full disclosure: I took over Trojans Wire at the very end of February and the start of March. I moved over here from Badgers Wire. The man who replaced me at Badgers Wire is Asher Low. I have followed his work at Badgers Wire and think he is doing an excellent job, so I do sincerely think his views on topics are helpful and well-informed.
I wouldn’t just share Asher’s views for kicks, or out of a sense of friendship. I would need to be able to cite a quote or article which is particularly relevant to a situation if I wanted to include it in a column here at Trojans Wire.
Asher provided just such a quote with this astute tweet below, which — in my opinion — sums up Sunday night and Monday morning quite well:
Isn’t it amazing how all this is happening in a 24 hour scramble when we had idk 5 months to talk this out
— Asher Low (@alow_33) August 10, 2020
Isn’t that the truth? Trevor Lawrence, to his credit, spoke up once it became relatively clear that the Big Ten was about to bail on the season. Lawrence wanted to play. We in the college sports content business need college football to play; we will take a significant hit in our personal income if there is no football to cover this fall. It’s good that Lawrence spoke up.
Yet, why did it take a star player speaking up to make conferences and school presidents react with considerable urgency? Where was this urgency the past five fucking months?
Where was this urgency in terms of leaning on Congress to pass substantial, far-reaching economic stimulus for citizens and states — FAR MORE than what was passed in the March CARES Act, which was a giveaway to elite corporations with mere bread crumbs for state governments and ordinary people?
Where was this urgency in terms of funding refurbishments and updates for school buildings to provide ventilation, which is a prerequisite for having schools reopen?
Our leadership class in this country — mostly government, but also college sports (chiefly the presidents of major universities) — has been sitting on its hands the past five months.
Why, indeed, did it take Trevor Lawrence to create — as Asher Low noted — a 24-hour mad scramble?
My gosh: If college football had announced it was going to cancel the season in late June, this same firestorm might have occurred, only with a key difference: We might have had enough time to develop the urgency which would have created the political pressure necessary to provide widespread economic stimulus and infrastructural help to create conditions needed to play college football. We might have taken athletes — such as Trevor Lawrence — seriously enough to listen to them and create a temporary emergency arrangement in which they got hazard pay and full guaranteed health care.
Why did it take Trevor Lawrence to wake everyone up? It’s wonderful that Lawrence spoke up, but it certainly shows that college sports leaders — especially university presidents — have been acting without a plan, acting without any real awareness of the need to apply political pressure on Congress or make major adjustments to meet this crisis situation.
Given this failure of our leadership class at the university level, we need to make sure political pressure will not allow for future screw-ups. If leaders can’t lead effectively in a crisis, they shouldn’t continue to be allowed to lead us. This applies to government as well, but today, it powerfully applies to college sports.