And Now We Have Lost the College Football Season

Today has not been a good day. Today has been a very sad day for me in fact. And while nothing is official, it seems like, at the very least, the Big Ten and Pac 12 are all but ready to cancel all of their fall sports, including football.

Now, I am not reporting this, I am not trying to be one of the first people to get this out on the internet, I am not trying to stoke any flames. But, if you have read anything this morning or afternoon, or read anything yesterday, big time important people from the power 5 conferences had an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss calling off the season. That type of thing doesn't happen, or if it does, it is not for good news. But, like I said, nothing is official yet, but it seems like it is inevitable. I have read two conflicting reports in the last thirty minutes where one person said the Big Ten voted and canceled the season, and twelve minutes later, I kid you not, another reporter came out and said that they spoke to a Big Ten spokesperson, and that person said that there have been no decisions made. Both of these reporters are reputable too. This isn't 247 or Rivals or anything like that. This was Dan Patrick and Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic. These people are in the know. But either way, this is upsetting and troubling and makes me so mad at our country, and the lack of taking this virus serious. I am also hyper pissed off at the NCAA, which I will get to today.

This is upsetting because I love college football. I truly do. It is my favorite sport played in my favorite season. Look, I love basketball, I love watching my son play baseball, but college football is head and shoulders above all of that. It has been the mainstay for my life to this point. My earliest memories are watching Michigan with my dad. I named my puppy after Bo Schembechler. I have a Wolverines tattoo. One of my most prized possessions is a Charles Woodson signed football. And there is nothing I enjoy more than watching college football from dawn to dusk on a Saturday afternoon in the fall. The fact that it is going to be, most likely, canceled or postponed is a real bummer. I'd be lying if I didn't say I got choked up reading stories about the inevitable downfall this morning.

I'm mad at our country because a lot of people, far, far too many, have just blown off the CoronaVirus. I see people not wearing masks in public. I see people gathering in crowds well over the suggested size, and of course they aren't social distancing. I have seen far too many people flood restaurants the moment they reopened. I see way too many people throwing humongous parties. But what is most frightening is the people who think this is a hoax. How stupid and selfish and ignorant and arrogant do you have to be? What kind of an asshole are you that you think you are above this? Does the death count, which I believe is over 165,000 in the US, not strike fear in you? Do you still think that is a "hoax"? Does your "president" really make you think this is going away, or that it is under any kind of control? If so, I feel so very sorry for you, and I do not need you in my life. The simple fact that sports have been affected by this should be evidence enough that this is real. Sports didn't stop during the Spanish Flu, sports didn't stop during wars, sports didn't stop after 9/11. But sports have been shuttered and left to the unknown since CoronaVirus. The sheer fact that we have had stops and starts, shutdowns, brand new protocols, should be more than enough evidence that this is real, and this is scary. How are you morons going to feel come fall when The University of Ohio State or Michigan or Oregon or Texas or Alabama or Florida or California or UCLA isn't taking the field because of CoronaVirus. Will you then, finally take this seriously? Is canceling football finally going to be the thing that makes you stop and think and act correctly for the first time in your life? I hope so, but I doubt it. You will all say, we can watch it in the spring or we will wait until next season. What if things aren't better by then? We all thought this was going to go away, but it hasn't. It has only gotten worse. Who's to say where we will be in the fall, winter or next spring. But, if we keep living how we are living right now, it won't be better.

As for the NCAA, to wait until now to make these conferences make decisions, and for Mark Emmert to come out and say stuff, I say, sorry mom and dad, shut the fuck up. You have had four plus months. You had time to see how other sports have handled this. You've had time to put things in place to make a season possible. Hell, you have even had conferences shift to a conference only schedule, had them release it, get fans' hopes up, and now you are saying it needs to be shut down. What a crock the NCAA and Emmert are. They are thieves of joy and they are taking advantage of the student athletes. I'm so happy that guys like Justin Fields and Trevor Lawrence are putting their voice out there and letting the NCAA know that they want to play, and that they think it is safer to play than to abandon these kids for an entire season and to send them home. Fields and Lawrence both said they think it is safer to stay and play. They have proper protocol going on. Lawrence went as far to say that he thinks it is safer than if he were sent home where he knows people aren't following the proper protocol. Fields echoed that. Hell, even Jim Harbaugh has come out with a statement in support of the players who want to play and feel safe to play. He even added some stats about how Michigan has managed to keep their positive cases so low, in fact zero positive cases as of their last testing date. But the NCAA won't even give these players, or Harbaugh the time of day I suppose. I'm sure they could also care less about the guys who are seniors and will never play football again, or the guys that had a shot at the NFL, but needed to come back to improve. I hope, at the very least, these players get to form a union and get paid for their likeness being used all the time.

This whole situation is crummy and it didn't have to be this way. Fall collegiate sports had more than enough time to figure out a safe way to do this and they blew it harder than the MLB is blowing it right now. It stinks that I and many other college football fans will not be able to watch our favorite teams and players. I know it is the safest thing to do, I really do, canceling or postponing the year, but the NCAA could have come up with something instead of just assuming CoronaVirus would go away, or be tamped down by now. It isn't, and that was fools thinking. Today is a sad sports day indeed. 

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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