Many college athletes are stating their desire to play this season, using the hashtag #WeWantToPlay. Trump took to Twitter to show his support, posting “The student-athletes have been working too hard for their season to be canceled.” The Mid-American Conference is “giving up hope on playing any sports in the first semester” as is The Mountain West reported The Associated Press.
The Associated Press reported, “A Big Ten spokesman said no votes on fall sports had been taken by its presidents and chancellors as of Monday afternoon.” But “it’s the university presidents who will have the final say on whether football is played.”
Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey clarified they are not quite ready to call it quits. “Best advice I’ve received since COVID-19: ‘Be patient. Take time when making decisions. This is all new & you’ll gain better information each day,” Sankey posted on Twitter. “Can we play? I don’t know. We haven’t stopped trying” he added.
Just as is the case with leaders in every industry, there is a dispute on how football should be handled in the current age of COVID. Old Dominion University President defended his actions to cancel all fall sports. “We concluded that the season – including travel and competition – posed too great a risk for our student-athletes.”
Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh believes football can safely resume, citing “11 positives out of 893 administered to the members of the football program and none in the last 353 tests.” Harbaugh exclaimed, “I’m not advocating for football this fall because of my passion or our players desire to play but because the facts accumulated over the last eight weeks since our players returned to campus on June 13.”
Nebraska’s coach Scott Frost stated “our university is committed to playing no matter what, no matter what that looks like and how that looks. We want to play no matter who it is or where it is.” Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse wrote a “safer-with-football” themed letter to presidents and chancellors of the Big Ten:
“Life is about tradeoffs. There are no guarantees that college football will be completely safe – that’s absolutely true; it’s always true. But the structure and discipline of football programs is very likely safer than what the lived experience of 18-to-22-year-olds will be if there isn’t a season.”
Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security senior scholar, Dr. Amesh Adalja, who is a member of the NCAA’s COVID-19 advisory panel, believes only an “NBA-type bubble” can really protect the athletes. “If we’re going to try and minimize the risk of the virus, it’s really that the setting of the country as a whole is the issue, not really actually the sport.” Dr. Adlja added “because of the fact that we cannot solve these simple problems in a larger community of testing, tracing and isolating…If we can’t solve those problems there, it’s going to be very hard to do that in a college campus atmosphere.”
