It took a village to run this year’s college football season into the ground
Outlined against an early August sky, the Four Horsemen of incompetence rode again.
Greed, Politics, Media Blame and Cowardice are their aliases.
They’re really university officials and coaches, the U.S. government, fear mongering and the NCAA. They form a crest that in a matter of days will culminate in the cancellation of the 2020-21 College Football season.
Thousands of players and athletic department officials will be affected by these events for years to come. The four pillars of this great American tragedy have unknowingly joined forces since March to produce images of empty stadiums from Seattle to South Bend, Baton Rouge to State College.
The following is a look at each of these culprits and how they had a hand in putting us in this current state.
Greed (University officials and coaches)
College sports, in some ways, is like a massive game of Monopoly. The more power you have, the less others can intervene on that power. But when those who help give you that power, in this case the student-athletes, realize just how valuable they are, then they want a piece of the pie, too.
After Pac-12 and Big Ten’s student-athlete demands went viral last week followed by #WeWantToPlay, administrators and coaches went on the defensive and went virtually silent.
It makes absolutely no sense to have a football season when you’ve got some schools giving doing all of their learning online. Then you have coaches like Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh and Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy who are all for putting their players, many of them Black, at risk of catching coronavirus.
I mention the Black college football players because over this summer, many of them have spoken up on the racial injustices involving murders by law enforcement and the numbers of African Americans catching or even dying of the coronavirus. Instead of listening to these players and their concerns and taking a proactive approach, there has been little movement to help ensure player safety as cases continue to pop up on college campuses.
Politics (U.S. government)
The United States’ mishandling of the coronavirus can be linked to many changes we have seen and could see in the future. Typical norms like air travel and trips to the movie theater have slowed to a halt. A byproduct has reached the sports world as there is potentially no college football in the fall.
The same people, including the president, who have knowingly ignored science and the logic of putting masks on, social distancing, slowly phasing things back open, have prolonged a first wave of the virus. Now that the first wave and second wave could potentially mesh, things like sports are forced into a bubble, like the NBA, or struggling to go on without a bubble (looking at you MLB).
Our current government led by the president has turned wearing a mask into a political act instead of an act that’s pure human decency. We as a country can’t be “all in this together” if others are being shamed for attempting to not get sick or get others sick.
Media and player blame (Fear Mongering)
Clay Travis has a lot of stroke when it comes to the college football media. Fair or not, this noted sports media contrarian has stoked a lot of fire when it comes to the coronavirus. His campaign of “the media is rooting for the virus” should’ve been discarded and ignored, but some people bought into that propaganda. College football writers across the country were being blamed for purely pointing out the gaping holes in Travis’ logic.
Mix media blame with players speaking out on social justice and wanting more proper compensation for their efforts and work during a dangerous time, and you have people bemoaning the end of college sports as it is because we are removing the “amateur” aspect.
People who “care” about student athletes, yet will complain when those athletes realize their worth, are astounding. Even if there is not a season, the current collegiate model is not going to be the same. That conversation is not going to go away for a while.
Cowardice (The NCAA)
Back in March when the Ivy League decided to cancel its postseason basketball tournament, it was laughed at for panicking. Yet, the league turned out to be right. The NCAA canceled its men’s and women’s tournament along with all spring sports.
Fast forward to July, the Ivy League decided to delay all sports till January 2021. What did the NCAA do? Kicked the can down the road to delay a decision on July 24.
Just last week Mark Emmert, the NCAA’s president and lead can-kicker said, “It’s actually going to have to be each institution” when asked about how decisions will be made on football and fall sports.
You’re the president of the NCAA. Why are you not in front of this after your biggest money maker went away in March? Why have you been hiding in your Indianapolis castle while everything is going into the trash?
As soon as the both men’s and women’s tournaments along with the entire spring sports schedule was done back in March, the NCAA should’ve been proactive in saving the fall sports season.
Now, this act of not wanting to be an “overarching czar” or trusting conferences who clearly cannot police themselves has the NCAA and its lead sport in crisis mode.
Yet, here we are.
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 5:30 AM.
