COVID/Football Rhetoric

[messageboardsuperhero]

Everywhere you look on twitter the last few days, you will see certain national writers (Wolken, Rovell, etc.) writing and retweeting articles insinuating that the SEC and other leagues are being irresponsible for not cancelling yet. The SEC can’t see reality, they are willing to take health risks that other leagues won’t take, etc.

Be prepared to see a bunch of this all the way up until kickoff, if we make it that far. The pressure that the B1G and Pac 12 will put on the ACC, SEC, and Big 12 - via their lapdog journalists - is going to be massive in the next month or so. There are going to be all kinds of fear-driving articles trying to ratchet up the rhetoric about how dangerous COVID and it’s side effects can be to college athletes. It’s only going to get worse.

 

[Bulldog from Birth]

The outcry will be even bigger for a bailout check from those conference’s football revenue come January.

 

[MSUDC11]

“The Stubborn Six” is what Ross Dellenger called the six leagues who haven’t cancelled yet on Twitter, so it’s already started.

 

[messageboardsuperhero]

“The Stubborn Six” is what Ross Dellenger called the six leagues who haven’t cancelled yet on Twitter, so it’s already started.

Meanwhile, the B1G says it’s safe for students to be on campus, in dorms, taking classes, and eating in the dining halls. It’s safe for athletes to keep practicing and working out inside the facilities, just as they would during regular fall camp. Hell, many B1G schools are still doing intramural sports for regular students.

All that is safe, but playing actual university sanctioned fall sports games are unsafe? Keeping kids in you football building together for 20 hours a week is cool, but they can’t play the actual games on Saturday because that would be unsafe?

Hate Clay Travis all you want, but he’s got a damn good point there.

 

[Cooterpoot]

The media is a total **** show. There's no real reporting- Simply accusations, extreme takes, and panic promotion. Follow the money.

 

[messageboardsuperhero]

Expect to see a lot of gaslighting, just like this over the next few weeks. The B1G, Pac 12, and to a certain extent NCAA absolutely do not want the other leagues to play football this fall. It’s going to be an all out media campaign.

[tweet]1294106472532582402[/tweet]

[tweet]1294250881186246656[/tweet]

[tweet]1294017065288835073[/tweet]

[tweet]1293355993271853063[/tweet]

 

[dorndawg]

Reading Rovell was your first mistake.

 

[randystewart]

It really is astonishing how far the cancel culture is willing to go. The main concern expressed by the canceling conferences (the rare heart condition) is also associated with the common cold and the normal flu. So shouldn't every season be canceled? Also, they can get this condition no matter if they are playing football or not. The only difference is they are MUCH more likely to have the condition found and properly treated by the football medical staff. I really try not to buy into the conspiracies, but there is an EXTREME effort being made to cripple this country through the first week of November.

 

[Mobile Bay]

Rovell is exactly right, it's about politics.

Look at who the governors are in the canceled conferences. It's all about getting Trump out of office.

 

[aTotal360]

Any chance some people in the media want to paint this world as a hell hole before November?

 

[FISHDAWG]

I heard on the radio this am that the NCAA said the only fall championship will be football ... Not sure why Emmert said what he said in that tweet ... Unless the NCAA was just clarifying

 

[johnson86-1]

Reading Rovell was your first mistake.

Not sure about him in general, but that tweet is exactly right. Or at least almost exactly right. "risk tolerance" might not be the right word for worrying about perception and virtue signaling.

But aside from that, that's what's going on. All the Power5 Conferences have basically the same concerns. THey need the money, the don't want to punish the athletes, they don't want legal liability, they don't want to be second guessed and viewed as putting money over the athlete's interests. The three P5 conferences intending to play are putting more emphasis on the interests of the players and money for the conference (you can argue about which one is driving the decision) and the others are putting more emphasis on legal liability and perception (and again, you can argue about which one is driving the decision).

 

[o_dawgnabit]

I can't stand Clay Travis most times but he has been pretty accurate with this stuff. It is astonishing seeing how the media reporting has been with all this. And the second you accuse them of cheering for football to get canceled, they cry about it. Have yet to see one report about how few positive cases there have been since players reported back in June. I just home the university presidents can withstand the pressure the media will put on them to cancel. Because it is about to be relentless....

 

[dorndawg]

Rovell is exactly right, it's about politics.

Look at who the governors are in the canceled conferences. It's all about getting Trump out of office.

 

[QuaoarsKing]

Rovell is exactly right, it's about politics.

Look at who the governors are in the canceled conferences. It's all about getting Trump out of office.

There are several pro-Trump Republican governors on both Big 10 and Pac-12 country whose universities voted to shut down.

 

[Ibdancin]

Everywhere you look on twitter the last few days, you will see certain national writers (Wolken, Rovell, etc.) writing and retweeting articles insinuating that the SEC and other leagues are being irresponsible for not cancelling yet. The SEC can’t see reality, they are willing to take health risks that other leagues won’t take, etc.

Be prepared to see a bunch of this all the way up until kickoff, if we make it that far. The pressure that the B1G and Pac 12 will put on the ACC, SEC, and Big 12 - via their lapdog journalists - is going to be massive in the next month or so. There are going to be all kinds of fear-driving articles trying to ratchet up the rhetoric about how dangerous COVID and it’s side effects can be to college athletes. It’s only going to get worse.

Sweden didn't shut down anything. They don't even wear masks. They are in line with our numbers per million.

 

[Seinfeld]

The other piece of hypocrisy that’s baffling to me is that if the subject matter was virtually any other business, the majority of these same writers would be backing the idea that reopening under proper guidelines/precautions is the lesser of the evils rather than businesses closing, folks losing jobs, etc.

However, since this particular business involves a sport, it’s suddenly unfathomable that anyone would even consider it. Like they’ve completely forgotten the fact that college football generates 100x more money than most of these other businesses will ever dream about, and it also supports MANY small businesses and local economies as well. This is all before we even get to the debate about whether taking athletes off the field actually protects them in any way, shape, or form.

For those that don’t want to play, fine. Best of luck to you, but spare me the ridicule against those like the SEC that are still trying to figure things out. If you want to talk data, unknown lawsuits aside, the DATA currently overwhelmingly indicates that more harm than good will come from not playing.

 

[ckDOG]

It's entertainment. Don't click on what you don't like.

Rovell, Travis, and company don't believe half of what they say. They just have a position to sell and you are the consumer.

 

[Russ Wheeler]

Sweden didn't shut down anything. They don't even wear masks. They are in line with our numbers per million.

I think we can all agree at this point that the shutdown was nearly useless. But, we didn't know much at the time, and thankfully Trump instituted travel bans. The narrative about helping the hospitals was proven false, we even know the CDC lied about masks and such. Knowing what we know now, we never would have shut anything down most likely, and probably just wore masks and quarantined the older population.

At this point, the media has run rampant, so everybody now believes that one positive case is grounds for cancelling life. I'm really not sure where we can realistically go. The real problem is that there is a significant portion of the population that legitimately fears the virus (because the media told them to), and that is the choke point.

 

[Russ Wheeler]

Rovell, Travis, and company don't believe half of what they say. They just have a position to sell and you are the consumer.

Slightly OT, but since you brought up entertainment.....I had a convo about this with a guy I talk to frequently. I don't feel that college football (and really a lot of college sports) really are truly entertainment. It's more than that. You don't amass the industry that football has done, without it being much more than that. It's part of our being. Some people try to decouple it as they get older (I've tried to do that), but to talk as if it's simply "entertainment" is false in my opinion.

MSU sports is not a light switch I can turn off. I may not get as mad about the wins and losses as I used to, but we're all invested and want to see what will happen next, and to an extent, we feel as if we're involved by going to games and wearing gear, etc. This is what people in other parts of the country don't seem to get, esp. the Pac-12. The Big Ten gets it, they just too have too many idiots in places of power.

We've all de-emphasized sports to an extent due to this stupid hysteria, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking it's just entertainment. Rosebowl talks about this on his podcast all the time. I just embrace it at this point, until the day something happens that forces me to disconnect, and that will be a messy breakup.

 

[philduckworth]

“The Stubborn Six” is what Ross Dellenger called the six leagues who haven’t cancelled yet on Twitter, so it’s already started.

Nice, unbiased reporting by the media calling them the Stubborn Six. Geez.

 

[dog12]

There are several pro-Trump Republican governors on both Big 10 and Pac-12 country whose universities voted to shut down.

Such as?

 

[QuaoarsKing]

It's baffling to me why some people continue to pump up Sweden as some kind of "what might have been" success story, especially bringing in the deaths/million stat.

Compare Sweden to its neighbors. The country has been a disaster so far:

No, it's not the worst in Europe, but it's pretty high up there, not something to be envied. And you raise the point that our numbers are similar, but Sweden is 10% higher in deaths/million than we are - we're at 508 right now.

And this is despite all the advantages Sweden has over us. Imagine how much lower our rate would be if our population were as healthy as theirs. Imagine how much lower our rate would be if our population centers were as small as Sweden's. Sweden's largest metro area, Stockholm, is comparable in size to Sacramento. Next on its list are Gothenburg (similar metro size to Tuscon) and Malmö (similar metro size to Little Rock). Think how many fewer deaths we'd have if our biggest cities were only the size of Sacramento, Tuscon, and Little Rock. Sweden has all these advantages over us and still has a death rate higher than ours, and a death rate WAY higher than any of its neighbors. Its response has been disastrous and it's ridiculous to hold it up as an example of a country that did something well.

 

[QuaoarsKing]

Such as?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_governors

Doug Ducey, R-AZ
Mike Dewine, R-OH
Gary Herbert, R-UT
Eric Holcomb, R-IN

There's also Larry Hogan of MD, though he's clashed with Trump a bit too much to really call him "Pro-Trump." However, he has admonished John Kasich for endorsing Biden so it's hard to pin down where his heart really is.

 

[Seinfeld]

On a related note, I have to admit that I got a bit of a laugh this week about New Zealand. Last weekend, my wife and I got a 15 minute lecture from my MiL about New Zealand’s AMAZING handling of C19 leading to it being eradicated in the country, and this could clearly be attributed to the fact that New Zealand is run by a woman.

Aside from the fact that we’re talking about an isolated country with a population smaller than metro Atlanta(which I kept to myself), fast forward 3 days and they’ve now had an outbreak

 

[Ibdancin]

It's baffling to me why some people continue to pump up Sweden as some kind of "what might have been" success story, especially bringing in the deaths/million stat.

Compare Sweden to its neighbors. The country has been a disaster so far:

No, it's not the worst in Europe, but it's pretty high up there, not something to be envied. And you raise the point that our numbers are similar, but Sweden is 10% higher in deaths/million than we are - we're at 508 right now.

And this is despite all the advantages Sweden has over us. Imagine how much lower our rate would be if our population were as healthy as theirs. Imagine how much lower our rate would be if our population centers were as small as Sweden's. Sweden's largest metro area, Stockholm, is comparable in size to Sacramento. Next on its list are Gothenburg (similar metro size to Tuscon) and Malmö (similar metro size to Little Rock). Think how many fewer deaths we'd have if our biggest cities were only the size of Sacramento, Tuscon, and Little Rock. Sweden has all these advantages over us and still has a death rate higher than ours, and a death rate WAY higher than any of its neighbors. Its response has been disastrous and it's ridiculous to hold it up as an example of a country that did something well.

Make excuses all you want. No shut down. No masks. Same results expect they have 30% now immune.


Give me that over what we did ANY day.

 

[QuaoarsKing]

Make excuses all you want. No shut down. No masks. Same results expect they have 30% now immune.


Give me that over what we did ANY day.

There wasn't a single "excuse" in the post, just facts and figures.

If we had Sweden's death rate, we'd be looking close to 20,000 more deaths and counting (so, not the "same results"). But if we'd done what Sweden did, it would probably be a lot higher, since we're less healthy and have so many more huge, dense population clusters. I am not qualified to estimate such things, but it's safe to say the number would be a lot more. I don't find that admirable.

Why not point to Germany instead? They've got a lot of huge metros and have had a much smaller death/million rate than we have. I wish we'd done what they did, and maybe we'd have a lot fewer deaths, as opposed to having a lot more if we'd done what Sweden did.

 

[Irondawg]

I really don’t understand a lot of sports reporter angles on here. It’s got to be one of a few things:

1) they are just the type that are terrified of the virus and don’t think the risk of a few kids getting very sick is worth it. So it’s a moral police thing. Or maybe they don’t want a guilt associated with promoting the sport should an athlete die.

2) they are being funded to write pieces of a particular opinion

3) they see this as their chance to help move college athletics back to way other used to be where it wasn’t big money and big business driving everything

1&3 don’t make a ton of sense because it would negatively affect their earnings potentially and I really hate the idea of number 2 being true but that seems the most logical at this point.

 

[Cooterpoot]

N

 

[Ibdancin]

There wasn't a single "excuse" in the post, just facts and figures.

If we had Sweden's death rate, we'd be looking close to 20,000 more deaths and counting (so, not the "same results"). But if we'd done what Sweden did, it would probably be a lot higher, since we're less healthy and have so many more huge, dense population clusters. I am not qualified to estimate such things, but it's safe to say the number would be a lot more. I don't find that admirable.

Why not point to Germany instead? They've got a lot of huge metros and have had a much smaller death/million rate than we have. I wish we'd done what they did, and maybe we'd have a lot fewer deaths, as opposed to having a lot more if we'd done what Sweden did.

You are making excuses. You are pretty much demanding that people stop talking about Sweden. Why?

Again, Their numbers are in line not just with the USA, but the UK and other nations without a mask.... without a shut down. With out the trillions spent, without sports stopping. and they now have 30% immunity.

 

[FQDawg]

On a related note, I have to admit that I got a bit of a laugh this week about New Zealand. Last weekend, my wife and I got a 15 minute lecture from my MiL about New Zealand’s AMAZING handling of C19 leading to it being eradicated in the country, and this could clearly be attributed to the fact that New Zealand is run by a woman.

Aside from the fact that we’re talking about an isolated country with a population smaller than metro Atlanta(which I kept to myself), fast forward 3 days and they’ve now had an outbreak

Their "outbreak" is about 30 cases that likely came from either tourists or workers importing goods. And to combat it, they've basically shut down Auckland for 12 days. So, yeah, they're doing a much better job of handling it than we are.

 

[QuaoarsKing]

You are making excuses. You are pretty much demanding that people stop talking about Sweden. Why?

Again, Their numbers are in line not just with the USA, but the UK and other nations without a mask.... without a shut down. With out the trillions spent, without sports stopping. and they now have 30% immunity.

I don't "demand" that you stop talking about any country. I'm just recommending you to use a little critical thinking and not glorify a country who has a higher death rate than the USA despite clear advantages. Their death rate is awful, one of the worst in theworld, again despite advantages,. I thank President Trump for at least not sending us down THAT path...

And Sweden absolutely did shut down professional soccer and hockey for months, so I'm not sure if your sources are telling you things in good faith.

ETA: Can you really look at where Sweden is, compared to Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, and not see anything unsettling about their number?

 

[Russ Wheeler]

I really don’t understand a lot of sports reporter angles on here. It’s got to be one of a few things:

1) they are just the type that are terrified of the virus and don’t think the risk of a few kids getting very sick is worth it. So it’s a moral police thing. Or maybe they don’t want a guilt associated with promoting the sport should an athlete die.

2) they are being funded to write pieces of a particular opinion

3) they see this as their chance to help move college athletics back to way other used to be where it wasn’t big money and big business driving everything

1&3 don’t make a ton of sense because it would negatively affect their earnings potentially and I really hate the idea of number 2 being true but that seems the most logical at this point.

Even if it's no. 2, they still believe in what they write because you can see the passion they have for it. Even if somebody is paying you to do something, if you don't like doing it, it'll show.

I think it's likely that it's a combination of all 3. Writers in general aren't the manliest folks around, they are generally wormy and snarky, and have a vendetta due to their own experiences. So it makes sense that they lean left nationally.

 

[mstateglfr]

Rovell is exactly right, it's about politics.

Look at who the governors are in the canceled conferences. It's all about getting Trump out of office.

Your comment is as accurate as this comment- Look at who the governors are in the support play conferences. Its all about keeping Trump in office.

 

[mstateglfr]

On a related note, I have to admit that I got a bit of a laugh this week about New Zealand. Last weekend, my wife and I got a 15 minute lecture from my MiL about New Zealand’s AMAZING handling of C19 leading to it being eradicated in the country, and this could clearly be attributed to the fact that New Zealand is run by a woman.

Aside from the fact that we’re talking about an isolated country with a population smaller than metro Atlanta(which I kept to myself), fast forward 3 days and they’ve now had an outbreak

I heard about this a couple days ago on the radio. It was reported as after a hundred days of being covid free, a family/small group was found with some positive cases. Oh, and one person works in a cold storage facility so that would be tested.
Is that the outbreak? Is it now tremendously worse than what was initially reported? Or is 'outbreak' being used liberally?

 

[engie]

The major difference between Germany and the rest of the west was how they counted their deaths. I agree that they have handled it overall the best of any western democracy. But people there die FROM Covid. Not simply "with" Covid. It's an important distinction. They show 20% fewer cases per capita than France, on 10% higher per capita testing, with 400% fewer deaths. Easy to see that there's more going on in those numbers. Unless, of course, we took out 3/4 of what would have been the remaining vulnerable population there back during the 40s**

 

[engie]

We'll see where Sweden is at the end of this thing compared to everyone else. It won't be long now until the weather that's helped much of Europe and hurt much of the US flips the script.

 

[johnson86-1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_governors

Doug Ducey, R-AZ
Mike Dewine, R-OH
Gary Herbert, R-UT
Eric Holcomb, R-IN

There's also Larry Hogan of MD, though he's clashed with Trump a bit too much to really call him "Pro-Trump." However, he has admonished John Kasich for endorsing Biden so it's hard to pin down where his heart really is.

Maybe he doesn't take a position based on his heart, but looks at reality and recognizes that Trump is extremely flawed and there are plenty of reasons to criticize him but that he's still a much better alternative than Biden?

 

[Ibdancin]

We'll see where Sweden is at the end of this thing compared to everyone else. It won't be long now until the weather that's helped much of Europe and hurt much of the US flips the script.

Not really. Well, that is if you believe in the "it's never going away" and will return from here on. Herd immunity is needed.

 

[johnson86-1]

It's baffling to me why some people continue to pump up Sweden as some kind of "what might have been" success story, especially bringing in the deaths/million stat.

Compare Sweden to its neighbors. The country has been a disaster so far:

No, it's not the worst in Europe, but it's pretty high up there, not something to be envied. And you raise the point that our numbers are similar, but Sweden is 10% higher in deaths/million than we are - we're at 508 right now.

And this is despite all the advantages Sweden has over us. Imagine how much lower our rate would be if our population were as healthy as theirs. Imagine how much lower our rate would be if our population centers were as small as Sweden's. Sweden's largest metro area, Stockholm, is comparable in size to Sacramento. Next on its list are Gothenburg (similar metro size to Tuscon) and Malmö (similar metro size to Little Rock). Think how many fewer deaths we'd have if our biggest cities were only the size of Sacramento, Tuscon, and Little Rock. Sweden has all these advantages over us and still has a death rate higher than ours, and a death rate WAY higher than any of its neighbors. Its response has been disastrous and it's ridiculous to hold it up as an example of a country that did something well.

Sweden has been less destructive of it economy and the lives of its citizens and still is in line or better than many other european countries. Germany appears to have had a similar recession with fewer deaths. We'll have a better idea after cold and flu season as to whether Sweden made a good choice or not. .