Big Ten postpones fall football: Thank goodness sanity prevailed

The Big Ten makes its call

I’ve long been of the opinion that college football couldn’t safely be played this year. Not only is it nearly impossible to pull this off, it’s completely unfair to ask “amateur” athletes to subject themselves to the restrictions required to pull this off. You’d be asking a bunch of 20-somethings to stay in and not party. They say they’ll do it right now, but let’s see how things would be working four weeks into the season.

Also, nobody has accounted for how things would even be judged if one team had to miss a game due to their opponent having a COVID outbreak. What if they were undefeated otherwise but had missed a game with a major opponent because of said outbreak? We’re already talking about the most subjective sport in the world outside of figure skating and they have no real plan as to how they should judge the season. It’s all up in the air.

If you don’t have a clear cut plan, it’s not going to work during a pandemic. Adding to their troubles is the fact that the players have found their voice and inner power. They are organizing en masse. They are tweeting as one and they’ve even got the President of the United States tweeting about this very topic, even if it is to distract from E. Jean Carroll getting a court order for Donald Trump’s DNA. The point is that a season couldn’t be further away and that’s exactly why it should’ve never been played.

Sanity appears to be prevailing here, as the Big Ten decided to postpone its fall football season with a chance of playing in the spring.

Thank God for that. Without a bubble, it’s proving really difficult for different sports to contain the virus. The NBA, by virtue of of every team being in a bubble and with smaller rosters, has found a ton of success and is playing a season without incident. MLB, by contrast, is having consistent outbreaks and has already had to reschedule many games. MLS is having some success even as they are beginning a restart. But football? It’s just not time for that. We’re talking about over 100 people per team and over 130 Division-1 FBS teams and they’re gonna contain that? Keep dreaming. Sanity appears to have prevailed. The sport will be back, it will be better than ever, but right now the right decisions are being made, at least by the Big Ten.