The Big Ten and Pac 12 cancelling games will have a huge impact, but the blame for that lies squarely in the halls of power.
After dithering about it for far too long, the Big Ten Conference announced Tuesday afternoon that they were postponing the 2020 college football season out of concerns for player safety due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Pac-12 announced their cancellation a short while later and other conferences may follow suit.
What’s becoming clear is that, despite lawmakers adamantly pushing for it, the likelihood of college football happening this fall are slim to none. The coronavirus remains unchecked, spreading through states at an alarming speed. Without any centralized plan to combat or counteract the spread, the risks are just too great. Though both conferences acted for some time like playing as a given, they ultimately made the right choice to postpone the season.
Of course, football fans are disappointed at having Saturday afternoons suddenly free, but they’re placing the blame everywhere but where it squarely belongs: on the shoulders of leaders who failed to act when they had the chance.
The fact that the Big Ten and Pac-12 are pushing their football seasons to spring is a natural extension of the failed state we’ve found ourselves living in. As the Washington Nationals’ Sean Doolittle put it, sports are the reward for a functioning society and it’s clear we’re not functioning very well.
Coronavirus cases continue to rise, masking wearing is viewed as a political statement and leaders continue to punt on important decisions that would allow us to get back to normal. The United States failed spectacularly in its response to COVID and no amount of complaining about football is going to make that right.
There was a brief window in which extreme actions could have been taken—like adequate unemployment benefits, rent-freezes, eviction moratoriums and free COVID testing —that would have allowed people to stay home to curb the spread of the disease. Instead, political leaders pushed back against mask regulations, censored their own health advisors and made COVID related deaths harder to track. On a national level, Trump pushed hydroxychloroquine, put his son-in-law in charge of the pandemic response, and made the political calculation to let the virus do its thing, since it was only affecting “blue states.”
The Atlantic’s Ed Yong put it best.
During a pandemic, leaders must rally the public, tell the truth, and speak clearly and consistently. Instead, Trump repeatedly contradicted public-health experts, his scientific advisers, and himself. He said that “nobody ever thought a thing like [the pandemic] could happen” and also that he “felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” Both statements cannot be true at the same time, and in fact neither is true.
Without any coordinated response to COVID, college football should be a non-starter. The risks are simply too high, and playing football in a bubble, as the NHL and NBA are doing, is impossible. Plus, as we learn more about the health risks associated with COVID, it is unconscionable to gamble with the long term well being of players.
The people that want college football at all costs —usually rich white guys who are willing to exploit Black labor—argue that athletes need to embrace “risk,” while they sit comfortably free from any threat to their health and safety. Trump’s supporters, lawmakers and voters alike, have embraced a death cult, happily and ignorantly marching off to sacrifice themselves and their health to the false notion that freedom somehow demands we do nothing to stop a global pandemic from ravaging the populace.
College football shouldn’t require kids who are already exploited to take on more risk just so those comfortably ensconced in their own homes can be distracted for a few hours. The Big Ten and Pac 12 cancelling games will have a huge impact, but the blame for that lies squarely in the halls of power, not at the feet of players.
