Clearly, the SEC is leading the charge for money over safety.
Most of the noise coming down on the side of playing college football is from the SEC, the richest gridiron conference with the steepest and deepest tradition. It sure looks like those schools in the SEC that will be allowed to play will take the field this fall.
Whether presidents on those campuses and governors in those states step in remains to be seen, but the SEC is acting like it cannot collectively live without king football. So what if 90,000 people pack their stadiums and someone gets sick and dies, it was their choice.
Where the rubber meets the road from the pocketbook to courtroom will be this: if one of those kids who suits up in an SEC uniform dies of COVID 19, that wasn’t his choice. Sure, he could have quit the team but how many kids are going to do that? Even the ones who never tested positive might get infected and some could die. That could be a fatal black mark in so-called amateur athletics.
For the record, I certainly hope they find a way to protect players, coaches, officials and all game personnel so the games can go on. If they have to do it without fans, so be it, but the prevailing attitude among most college administrations is if the campuses aren’t safe enough to open up, how can athletes be subject to the threat?
Amateurs being put in such harm’s way could put a pox on college sports that not only might cost universities, conferences and the NCAA more than the $4 billion football makes, and it could send people to jail. If the president of Penn State faced prison time because he covered up for Jerry Sandusky’s pedophilia, that pales next to administrators who OK’d play and then lost an athlete to the virus?
I’m sorry, this is shaping up as the biggest dilemma secondary education in this country has ever faced. Until a vaccine can make everyone immune, colleges had better give students the option of returning to campus or continuing remote education. Athletics is in a different category because money makes it a different ballgame.
Right now, the SEC is acting like they want to play.
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