Again, I can’t help but count my
lucky stars at being the parent of an ex- high school and college athlete. Don’t get me wrong. I miss watching my daughter play softball
more than you can imagine, but the fact remains I got to watch her for a full
eight years, with five summers of travel thrown in as a bonus. My guess is that there are a lot of parents
out there who’d love to trade what I had for where they are with their kids.
The Big Ten just created a bunch
more potential—and imaginary—trading partners yesterday by announcing the
postponement of all fall sports. What
that comes down to is, Goodbye, Football.
Goodbye to the big revenue generator for ten (plus four, it must be the
New Math) athletic departments. The only
appropriate response here is, Wow.
Things are getting serious. The
Pac-12 also announced yesterday they were postponing fall sports.
Three other major conferences have
indicated they intend to go forward with football (we turn our lonely eyes to
you, Ole Miss). Good luck with
that. Good luck with betting on the
health of your players, despite evidence COVID-19 has led to heart problems
with young athletes. But, hey, the game’s
the thing.
I get players telling the media
they want to play; the sport is in large part who they are. What I don’t get is coaches acting like their
livelihoods have been taken away. No, they
haven’t. But play and risk the health of
your charges. Now, that could be taking
something away.
There’s just no getting around we’re
in uncharted territory here. As hard as
this may be, we’re going to have to start thinking in terms of cancelling, not
postponing, fall sports. You’re going to
play a bunch of games in spring and then go back to a full slate in the fall, coronavirus
permitting? I doubt even young, athletic
bodies could handle the strain.
People like Clare and me may be
the lucky ones. We have the memories,
the pictures, the video clips. High
school and college athletes today just have a lot of uncertainty.
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