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Hunter Reynolds has been busy — though he’ll be less busy than he anticipated this fall.
The Wolverines defensive back teamed up with former fellow Michigan CB Benjamin St-Juste — who’s now at Minnesota — to create ‘Big Ten United,’ stating what the conference football players would require in a 2020 season from a safety standpoint, as well as other bullet points to help them navigate playing football in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The statement was released the day after the conference announced its fall 2020 schedule, but a mere five days later, Reynolds, his Michigan teammates, and the rest of the players in the Big Ten Conference learned that they would not be taking the field in September, as originally planned.
Now, he and thousands of others must face the fact that they won’t be suiting up this fall, a decision that Reynolds — and assuredly countless others — feel was shortsighted. University presidents and chancellors made the vote, but the players and coaches were seemingly not consulted in the matter.
Appearing on Fox News on Friday, Reynolds shared why he and his teammates felt they could have — or should have — had the opportunity to play.
“Football is just something I just put so much time and dedication into along with the rest of my teammates,” Reynolds said. “We’ve been working since January for it and we really felt in this situation that the reward outweighed the risk. We thought we could play football and the university could keep us as safe as possible this season. And that’s just how we felt as players.”
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The big question now is what changed between last Wednesday and this Tuesday?
That’s something that players, coaches, parents of players and media are asking, especially after Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren — whose son, Powers Warren, is a tight end for Mississippi State in the SEC, a conference which intends to play this fall — said that he’d feel comfortable with his son continuing to play if given the opportunity.
Was it the myocarditis issue? As COVID-19 seems to sometimes produce the rare heart complication which resulted in the death of Florida State basketball player Michael Ojo. Dr. Chris Hutchinson, a former Michigan defensive end and father of current DE Aidan Hutchinson, claimed on 97.1 The Ticket on Thursday morning that the suggestion is anecdotal at this point, and that it remains very rare.
Could it be the list of demands placed on the conference and its member institutions by Reynolds and St-Juste, via the Big Ten United campaign? That’s also uncertain, but as Hutchinson noted: ‘There’s no additional medical information out’ that precipitated such drastic action.
The troubling aspect is that it was the presidents alone who made the decision. Assuredly, they heard from medical experts and lawyers before they unilaterally made the call, but some hadn’t even bothered to get a personal assessment from their football programs. Such is the case for University of Michigan president Dr. Mark Schlissel, at least according to Michigan defensive back Tyler Cochran, who slammed him in an Instagram post on Tuesday.
Clearly, the football contingent was lobbying to play, from the players to the coaching staff to the parents of the players. Jim Harbaugh put out a persuasive ‘fact-based’ list of reasons why the season should have continued as planned on Monday, sharing why Michigan in particular was equipped to handle the virus via stringent protocols including testing and social distancing.
On Fox News, Reynolds says that the voices of those who actually participate were minimized, even though they are the ones who are at risk in this situation. Given what happened in March, with basketball’s untimely cancellation, the Michigan defensive back wonders aloud why the decision-makers weren’t thinking far enough in advance, and even more so why they didn’t pay enough attention to the risk-mitigation factors already in place.
“I think we definitely feel like our opinion and our voice wasn’t heard in the matter,” Reynolds said. “And that if there were a conversation throughout the summer, throughout – ever since March Madness was canceled, if there was those conversations, we feel like we could have come out with a plan and just made everyone who was in charge of making those decisions realize that – obviously there’s no way to eliminate the risk in a situation like this, but there were measures that could have been taken to limit the risk as much as possible. As players, we feel like that didn’t happen.”
There are some, many perhaps, who applaud the Big Ten’s decision to keep student-athletes out of harm’s way, and certainly that aspect is applaudable. However, we won’t know whether it was a good or bad decision until we reach the hindsight stage — which will only be emboldened if other conferences — the SEC, ACC or Big 12 — play on as planned. If they play on and have a low amount of problems, the Big Ten and Pac-12 will look foolish. If it’s the opposite, the decision will look prescient.
Nonetheless, Michigan is preparing for whatever season may come, whether it be in the spring or next fall. Reynolds applauded the NCAA’s statement that players affected by cancellations won’t lose any eligibility, granting him and others peace of mind. But in the meantime, the Wolverines are allowed to spend 20 hours a week in non-contact practices, even with the season gone this fall. And it sounds like the team is making the most of it.
“Coach Harbaugh, he spoke with us the day of the announcement being made that the season was being canceled in the fall,” Reynolds said. “Within a matter of hours and days, the coaching staff put together a real comprehensive plan that we feel like will put us in the best position possible, so whenever the season does start, we’re going to be prepared.”
You can’t claim to be concerned with player safety and expect them to play two seasons in a calendar year — that much is farcical. The amount of hits that they take and a lack of recovery between seasons, especially with the mounting concerns over head safety in the wake of CTE, to play that many games in such a short amount of time could have different repercussions.
Coaches are now putting forth proposals for spring ball and while players are going to take what they can get, despite the unknown, they want to be a part of the conversation this time around — given that they’re the ones actually playing the game.
“I think playing two seasons in one calendar year is certainly something that’s never been done before,” Reynolds said. “But I think if we start planning for it now, we actually start including players in the conversation in how to move forward, I think that everyone can come to an agreement on the best step to move forward.”
Watch Reynolds’ entire interview below:
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