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The coronavirus health crisis in this country hasn’t gone anywhere and isn’t going anywhere, and as cases again spike amid a criminal failure of federal leadership, it’s increasingly bothersome to me how college officials continue to tip toe around the football-related elephant in the room.
This is what I mean:
NCAA shut down hoops recruiting for August earlier this week and I’m told there is a strong push to do the same for September. AD’s worried that coaches who leave the state would have to self-quarantine for 14 days.
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) June 26, 2020
The college basketball dead recruiting period is likely to extend through September because athletics directors are worried about 2-3 guys traveling out of state being stuck in quarantine as a result.
Just applying this line of thinking a bit more broadly, how exactly should we expect any given college football team to travel out of state during September and also play a football game? How’s that work? How is that supposed to be even remotely feasible, if it’s so bad—which it is—that anyone traveling at all should be expected to go into quarantine afterward?
Nobody at the switch is willing to talk frankly about this, apparently, but you don’t need to be even a halfway decent poker player to see their tells. When these same people attempt to justify playing football, despite how blatantly irresponsible that is, don’t mistake what they’re about: protecting investments, not people.
There was a point in time, probably back in April or so, when this country had a chance to salvage football in 2020. Unfortunately, wearing a mask for a 15-minute trip to the grocery store was simply too much for a wide swath of cable news disease-brained narcissists—the same incoherent fools who jump to deride anyone who appears soft for an inability to manage hardship.
We’re well beyond the point of no return; ADs don’t want to talk about that because football means almost everything to the viability of their departments. That’s pathetic enough, but there are only so many things I can be mad about in one day. We didn’t have to be stuck in this spot, prolonging our collective misery to this extent, but this is America, after all.