LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- When they canceled the NCAA Tournament, it wasn’t difficult to understand why. There was no time to adjust to COVID-19. Not enough tests could be obtained to make it possible. Same for the NBA season.
The Kentucky Derby, Indianapolis 500 and Olympics stepped aside for public health reasons, as did Major League Baseball, for a time.
But the scuttling of the fall seasons, including football, by the Big Ten Conference and the Pac-12 is something different.
These seasons are not gone because the novel coronavirus took them by surprise. These seasons are gone because of mismanagement, burned at the altar of American hubris. They are being halted because the collective coronavirus response in this country lacked coordination, cooperation and, in general, the kind of overall leadership needed to reverse the course of an epidemic. And they are being halted because the cascading problems of this virus are outpacing even the planned response of college sports conferences.
Football coaches love to talk about discipline. In this country, we lack it. We lack it in our government and in our own collective behavior.
Speaking with media on Thursday, Dr. Carlos Del Rio, an infectious disease specialist from Emory University, said of the reaction of college sports: "I feel like we have hit the iceberg, and we are making decisions about when we should have the band play."
What he is saying, sports fans, is that we have problems bigger than college football. But let’s leave those aside for the time being.
Del Rio’s colleagues echoed that the problem facing college sports is not just a college sports problem, but a community problem.
BIGGER THAN SPORTS
The situation: College conferences focused their plans on getting athletes back to campus and into workouts safely, assuming that community conditions would be improved as they moved toward competition. Maybe that was naive, but when conditions worsened, they were left facing far more complications than they bargained for and too many to overcome, at least in the view of two Power 5 conferences.
Were they shortsighted in their original plans? Maybe. But given the landscape in early June, the virus appeared to be waning in some areas and had yet to start to pick up in others.
The spikes, however, were widely predicted. Georgia opened, and the prevailing thought was that it was too much, too soon. Florida openly ridiculed the notion that it should exercise caution and went on to become the global epicenter of the pandemic. Texas didn’t want to hear about taking it slow and wound up taking it on the chin.
A look at cases per 100,000 population over the past week in the geographic footprints of the Power 5 conferences is enlightening. The lowest instance for any of the five is for the first conference to cancel fall sports: the Big Ten, with 32 cases per 100,000 in the states where the conference competes. The next-lowest is for the Pac-12.
The highest is for the league generally assumed to be the most determined to play: the Southeastern Conference, with 158 cases per 100,000 population in its states. The lowest in the SEC is Kentucky, with 98 cases per 100,000 in the past week, at the time of this calculation. How many cases per 100,000 would the experts on Thursday’s NCAA call like to see before play opens up? Five or 10.
Are the SEC, ACC and Big 12 fooling themselves or delaying the inevitable? Are they unnecessarily exposing their athletes to risk, with now a dozen college athletes having contracted myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle, a condition that is temporary but can be dangerous for athletes if not detected and treated. Athletes who contract it might be out several months, instead of several weeks.
The condition isn’t new, but its connection with COVID-19 and the virus’ contagious nature, made it enough of a concern that the Mid-American Conference listed it as a prime reason for shutting down its fall schedule.
A CRISIS OF LEADERSHIP
The relationship between crisis and leadership is fascinating. A crisis illuminates true leadership, and it exploits fraudulent leadership.
As conferences began to close down for the fall and the college sports foundations shook, NCAA president Mark Emmert was nowhere to be seen. The president of the U.S. did make an appearance, but not to consult with university leaders or college sports officials. He went on sports talk radio, saying that athletes are in top physical condition and would be fine, and that college football should go on – among other things.
A quick review: Leadership, in times of trial, shows up. It is out front. It is visible. But it also takes concrete steps. Calling into radio programs or Tweeting messages is not leadership. Emmert is absent. Donald Trump is conflating his role of president with that of pundit.
And the nation stumbles along, unable to turn back the first wave of this virus, let alone prepare for a second.
Maybe, now that people have seen a textbook lack of leadership on a relatively small scale in college football, they will recognize it on the larger scale of this nation.
For years, we have been talking about the changing landscape of college sports. On Tuesday, the earthquake happened.
BIGGER CHALLENGES AHEAD
I fear we’re in for a great many upheavals in the coming months that will make college football seem trivial.
You think whether Clemson or South Carolina will play football is a concern? How about 52 percent of renters in the state being at-risk of eviction, with 185,000 evictions expected there before the end of the year, according to a study by the Stout Risius Ross consultant firm.
What college sports are finding -- that as soon as one solution is created, another problem arises -- is being multiplied across the American landscape, as businesses board up, restaurants hang on, the travel sector contracts, jobs become more transient and the financial strength of the country erodes.
Job No. 1 is getting a handle on this virus. Job. No. 2 is getting people through the coming financial crisis.
This much should be clear by now – college sports leaders can make all the plans they wish, if the virus landscape does not improve in the nation around them, there is no point in striking up the band.
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