'Playing the Game'

Yesterday two of the nation’s Division I college athletic conferences – the Big Ten and the Pac 12 – announced they will postpone the 2020 football season.

The rest of the conferences now ought to do the same.

This decision to cancel might have been a no-brainer, what with coronavirus racing across our country now, but for one huge emotional reality: The gut-level feelings of glory around what happens each Saturday on gridirons in the fall, especially across the South. The passion of sports involved with college football ranks, in its intensity, up there close to NASCAR’s. Or higher.

The reality is also seriously financial. TV revenues that are allocated to each school easily get into the millions, and universities come to rely on this important stream of dollars.

Especially down here in the Southeastern Conference, we have our temples of loud reverence to college football (they are called Neyland Stadium, the Swamp, Jordon-Hare, that place Between the Hedges, and the rest). Anywhere near these raucous venues, one treads with high caution around any suggestion that the traditions of fall might vary.

There are, of course, actually several different “games” going on now, most well beyond the physical contests that engage two football teams. There is the game politicians play, driven by some elected officials wanting our return to “normal” to come quickly. There are the many insistent alumni boosters, and many high-profile coaches who see no need to postpone anything. And, almost an after-though, there is what’s become of public health and its guidances.

In this rarefied atmosphere, college administrators and their under-grads are caught in the middle of a sharply contested culture war.

Covid-19 has arguably changed everything, even our previously shared belief in the importance of science, such as what physics are also at play when young men crash into each other on the field, urged ever onward by the roar of the crowds.

But what of the athletes themselves and their health? What of their futures? And what of all the rest of the students on a given campus the following Monday morning? There is no normal now.

And what now from the Southeastern Conference? Yesterday all that the SEC commissioner would say is that if other conferences say “No” to a 2020 season, well, his might do the same.

Not exactly a Profile in Courage there.

© Keel Hunt, 2020