College football’s leaders are answering the wrong questions
July 13, 2020 8:57 AM   Subscribe

Ryan Nanni of the college football website Banner Society says, "The football part’s not safe until the college part is."

Just in case it's a little safe, though, Nanni has a (tongue firmly in cheek) suggestion: The Minimalist Schedule, where each of the teams in the Power 5 conferences plays exactly two games. The Big 12 was the first installment, with a fittingly brief justification for the idea. Nanni then presented the B1G version, the Pac-12 (and Notre Dame), the ACC, and the SEC.
posted by Etrigan (24 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
But the baseline question – whether it’s safe and smart for college athletes to be on college campuses this fall – is going unanswered and, worse, largely unasked.

I disagree that it's unasked, particularly as far as football is concerned. That question's been asked, answered and the answer ignored.

I think that ultimately the same reasoning is going to apply to COVID-19 that applies to concussions, writ large. The institutional justifications are already there, we've just gotta tweak the numbers: some kids are just going to have to die, there's going to be a lot of peripheral costs that are going to be largely ignored, and that's going to be an acceptable cost of satisfying old men's pride and keeping that sportball money machine churning that sweet, sweet cream.

I'm not sure what else can be said about it. It's monstrous, amoral institutional negligence, sure, but that's where we are. That's what got us here, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
posted by mhoye at 9:35 AM on July 13, 2020 [26 favorites]


Football is never safe.
posted by brevator at 10:17 AM on July 13, 2020 [8 favorites]


I wonder if football will become like boxing, a sport where the possibility of brain injury is just an acknowledged aspect of play, and consequently will fade in relevance as boxing has.
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:30 AM on July 13, 2020


Football is never safe.

Football doesn't normally cause brain damage to spectators, fellow students and the broader community. COVID seems to.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:06 AM on July 13, 2020 [7 favorites]


I stand by my prediction that college ball and the NFL either won't even start their seasons or will give up half-way through due to constantly having to cancel games because of positive tests. MLB and the NBA too for that matter. The NHL is the only one I give a chance to finish their schedule because they're playing in Canada which has an actual functioning government.
posted by octothorpe at 11:23 AM on July 13, 2020 [5 favorites]


I wonder if football will become like boxing, a sport where the possibility of brain injury is just an acknowledged aspect of play, and consequently will fade in relevance as boxing has.

The football industry is wealthy and powerful (especially when considering the role football plays in college fundraising), and it's not going down without a fight. They will continue to try to find ways to make football safer in terms of brain and other injuries, with mixed effectiveness, and a certain subset of fans will take this as an opportunity to talk about how football's gotten too feminine (they'll say 'soft,' or that players used to be 'tough,' but they mean 'feminine').

Meanwhile, some parents of athletically gifted kids will start to nudge them in another direction besides football, insurance companies will make it more expensive to put on injury-causing sports, soccer and women's sports will continue to gain popularity, etc., etc.

It's hard to say football will never go away--I mean, I'm sure people said that about bear-baiting. But I expect football will be with us for a very long time.
posted by box at 11:26 AM on July 13, 2020 [3 favorites]


But I expect football will be with us for a very long time.

Another 15,756 years or so, for sure , but likely in the same way Jai Alai is still around.
There are already plenty of serious problems in sports. Boxing has withered from the single most popular sport in the country 100 years ago, with much of the blame going to the weak, disjointed sanctioning bodies and the suspicious, contemptible promoters. Certainly, an undefeated record in the ring doesn’t mean as much as it once did.

In just the last few years, the game of football has been party to a bounty scandal, performance-enhancing drug allegations, concussion-related suicides, rapes, murders, drunken driving deaths and at least one child-molestation scandal. The NBA has had a referee go to prison for betting on games he officiated. Baseball’s own Hall of Fame couldn’t find a single living player worthy of induction this year. And the NHL’s audiences and revenues have spiraled downward thanks to a number of labor disputes and games now appearing on cable channels nobody can find.

It probably seems like the sport you love will never die, because there so many fans and they are so passionate and die-hard, and how could that ever fail? Except that there were once passionate, die-hard fans of jai alai. In time, most of them did in fact die.
posted by mhoye at 11:29 AM on July 13, 2020 [4 favorites]


Only tangentially related, but if you're looking for more Ryan Nanni content, he did a brief trading card show with Jon Bois.
posted by sagc at 11:36 AM on July 13, 2020


Got an e-mail today saying that The Patriot League (includes such heavy hitters as Boston University, the College of the Holy Cross, and Lehigh) has cancelled all fall sports.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:38 AM on July 13, 2020 [3 favorites]


Football doesn't normally cause brain damage to spectators

It's hard to say for certain, given the behavior/thinking of some spectators, and a lack of controlled studies...
posted by wildblueyonder at 11:49 AM on July 13, 2020 [4 favorites]


Football doesn't normally cause brain damage to spectators

I'm a football fan and when I saw this I immediately thought "Can't fall off the floor".
posted by srboisvert at 11:55 AM on July 13, 2020 [4 favorites]


Is permanent lung damage a sensible risk an athlete at that level wants to take on? But there's a big carrot and 18 year old decision making, so...
posted by j_curiouser at 12:09 PM on July 13, 2020 [2 favorites]


I don't like football in general, but the TBI comparisons are a huge derail. As NCAA football goes, so will basketball, baseball, etc. People are making stupid decisions for kids, involving their health and the health of spectators, and there is not enough dissent happening. There is no logical reason to be mandating sports on campuses this year, other than the bottom line impact. The NCAA will have blood on their hands and people should hold them accountable to it.
posted by q*ben at 12:55 PM on July 13, 2020 [4 favorites]


I wonder if football will become like boxing, a sport where the possibility of brain injury is just an acknowledged aspect of play, and consequently will fade in relevance as boxing has.

boxing obviously still exists as a sport with multi-millions of dollars involved at the higher levels. But it has long been surpassed by other options in terms of market share, audience interest, cultural impact -- certainly in the US of A. I wouldn't say that this all due to the sport's inherent savagery, brutality etc but I suspect some of it is. So yeah, I'd personally have no problem seeing football pursue a similar decline.

And I say this as someone who, as a kid, had a love for both. But the older I get, the harder it is to accept. At least motor racing (certainly at its upper echelons) generally involves rich kids. Sport of princes, I've heard it called.
posted by philip-random at 1:00 PM on July 13, 2020


How many of these student-athletes are going to see these half-hearted attempts at sanitizing their locker rooms and equipment as a farce, realize their scholarships are for half-baked online classes anyway, and voluntarily remove themselves from the equation? It's questionable whether the pro-leagues will even be running when school starts.
posted by meowzilla at 1:30 PM on July 13, 2020


Aside: my nephew is super disappointed there are no HS or club basketball games. He was looking forward to being scouted. He's very good. athletes sure got a bad hand.
posted by j_curiouser at 2:09 PM on July 13, 2020


Got an e-mail today saying that The Patriot League (includes such heavy hitters as Boston University, the College of the Holy Cross, and Lehigh) has cancelled all fall sports.

They're reserving the right to reschedule them for the spring, but it doesn't seem likely to happen.
posted by jmauro at 2:19 PM on July 13, 2020


The ESPN 30 for 30 film Sole Man is about Sonny Vaccaro and how he introduced sneaker sponsorships to college basketball. It is illegal to give money to the players (they’re “amateur student athletes”), but you could give the coach a GINORMOUSsack of filthy lucre check, and a new set of sneakers for the players.

Deep in my heart I hope this situation does force some sort of end to the phony “amateurism” of the NCAA; stop with the facade of the “student athlete”; they’re not there to get a fucking education, they’re there to play for the school so the alumni get a hard-on and donate money. A small number of the are apprenticing for the pros.

If the lie of amateurism were just some stupid cultural fig leaf, fine. But it’s corrupt and abusive of the ones who generate all that money, but are penalized SEVERELY if they ever look like they reached for a tiny slice of it.

I hope amateurism dies during this pandemic.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 2:37 PM on July 13, 2020 [12 favorites]


I've been a fan of college football (far less so the pros) since I was little. I've had season tickets to Arizona Wildcats football for the last ten years. I kept getting the emails from the ticket office - renewal deadline is soon, we've extended the renewal deadline, you can apply your tickets towards 2021 if you prefer, etc. And... no. I didn't renew. I wrote this season off all the way back in April. Don't get me wrong, I'll miss being at the stadium on Saturdays, but I didn't want to add my dollars to the reasons they might push to play again.

That's first and foremost what this is about for the athletic departments. It's the dollars. No season in 2020 is a financial nuclear bomb straight at the core of many athletic departments. At most large schools, football pays the freight for everything else. The volleyball team doesn't make money and costs money to run. Same with tennis teams. Or swimming. Etc. Football is what pays the bills for all of them. (The volleyball coach at Arizona tells people who ask how they can help the program, "Buy football tickets.") And so there's going to be a football season this fall - right up until the point where there isn't. Two FCS conferences have already said there will be no fall sports. Two FBS conferences have already said that they will only play a conference schedule if it turns out they can play football this year, and the rest are likely to follow. From my point of view, the athletic departments are currently at the "bargaining" stage in this whole thing.

The sea change in college sports is already happening. Many schools are already dropping certain sports. This is but a small bit of what's likely to happen, though. The amount of money surrounding FBS college football is insane. There's huge amounts of money in TV rights, priority ticket prices, advertising, sponsorships. Which pay for constantly increasing coaching salaries, stadium expansions, bigger and better facilities to attract recruits, and more. This is one reason why there's panic. There's been so much money coming in that it has created an arms race. And, as often happens, expenditures keep rising to meet income. That whole pyramid is threatening to come crashing down now. And if it does, the schools have no one to blame but themselves in their constant attempts to try to keep up and stay competitive. But the ripple effects will hit everyone. Bigger schools typically will play one or two smaller schools a year, which are called "guarantee games" or "buy games" because of the money paid to the smaller school for coming in to play. The big school typically gets a game's worth of ticket sales, an easy win and gets some of the benchwarmers in the game, and the small school gets a chance to play with the big boys and they take home a nice check. With non-conference games not happening, these schools lose that money, and it often makes up a big chunk of athletic department revenue. The smaller schools tend not to have self-sustaining athletic departments. When you combine the loss of revenue to to financial crisis schools are already facing with the pandemic, that doesn't bode well for anyone.

So, like I said, watch the announcements and planning. We're gonna have a football season right up until we aren't.
posted by azpenguin at 3:16 PM on July 13, 2020 [3 favorites]


Ryan Nanni was also part of the the Shutdown Fullcast, the Internet's only college football podcast. I've listened to a lot of podcasts, and nothing else has ever attained the sublime heights of the Fullcast. Sadly, COVID-19 layoffs at Vox Media have lead to uncertainty about its future...
posted by wintermind at 4:38 PM on July 13, 2020


Hey, um, wintermind...
posted by azpenguin at 10:33 PM on July 13, 2020


azpenguin, what is this strange feeling in my heart? Is...is it hope?!
posted by wintermind at 6:03 AM on July 14, 2020 [1 favorite]


I have a friend whose daughter plays Division I soccer. They are now involved in summer practices… Which are “voluntary“, and require the signing of Covid waivers. Of course, they’re not truly voluntary… Unless you really don’t want to be on the team.
posted by ecorrocio at 7:04 AM on July 14, 2020 [4 favorites]


Exactly. Coaches aren’t supposed to know who is or isn’t participating in off season stuff in many cases. They know.
posted by azpenguin at 8:01 AM on July 14, 2020 [2 favorites]


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