Sports and The Pandemic

Top_Shelf wrote:

So, let's call it junior football, keep it a subsidiary of Big Business University. We can still do away with fake-ass amateurism and screw the millionaire bosses that run their system of indentured servitude.

(...)

Let's even out the power imbalance, get athletes representation, insurance and an actual paycheck and create a...level playing field. No reason Saban or Dabo or f*cking Steve Sarkisian (who just signed a $2mm contract in the middle of a pandemic) can't give that money to the performers we want to see.

I'm on board. Just like juniors hockey, pay stipends and provide free room and board. On top of that, provide free education, which is what keeps the whole endeavor a "college" thing. Eliminate restrictions on what jobs they can work and who can feed them a damn meal. And instead of preventing players from making money from their likeness, provide the structure and mechanisms to facilitate collective licensing (ie. a videogame being able to license all participating players as a collective, rather than having to negotiate one-on-one), without restricting an individual's ability to separately sell themselves.

Academic requirements can stay in place. Athletes still go to class (as much as now at least). It's still college sports. None of these changes make players any less of college students. After all, when I was a college student, I could work whatever job, eat whatever meal offered, hire an agent and sell my name and likeness to whomever I wanted (if anyone had happened to want it), but I still had to make my grades to stay in college. All this does is remove restrictions from athletes that we don't require of any other college student.

DSGamer wrote:
Ego Man wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
Ego Man wrote:

Just a sports reporter desperate for clicks. It’s a shame there isn’t a way to take my click back b nothing like using the NCAA’s muddled response to the pandemic to go hyperbolic.

Do you have thoughts beyond "desperate for clicks"? Do you think 18 year old kids who don't get health coverage for brain injuries should be playing for free during a pandemic?

Meh, you dumped a joke of an article without any comment, why do you expect deep analysis?

Sorry. I submitted it without comment because I agreed with it. What’s the joke?

Ego Man wrote:

But to answer your question, I do think the Football players deserve much better health insurance and insurance to help cover any loss of income stemming from injuries. They deserve to be paid above and beyond the considerable value they receive already through tuition, room and board, meal plans, tutors, ect.

All of this does not cancel my initial judgement on the joke of a article.

What’s the joke?

To me the author wanted to use the pandemic as an excuse to do something that he already wanted to do, kill off college football but just couldn’t get around to saying it until now.

As they say in politics, never let a crisis go to waste

College football is deeply corrupt and it isn’t committed to the safety and well-being of the players who make its product popular. I think it’s relevant to say that the people who profit off the sport won’t take care of the kids.

DSGamer wrote:

College football is deeply corrupt and it isn’t committed to the safety and well-being of the players who make its product popular. I think it’s relevant to say that the people who profit off the sport won’t take care of the kids.

Always relevant.

Replying here to discussion from the college football thread because I delve into more generic sports and the pandemic thinking.

manta173 wrote:
Badferret wrote:
manta173 wrote:

Saban made a decent point recently.

The question shouldn't be about whether or not we have football, but whether or not students need to be on campus. The players are a lot more likely to get it being around the campus with thousands of students than playing football.

But there's the rub. If you have football without the rest of students on campus then that's the nail in the coffin for the idea of the student athlete.

I mean, I think it's inevitable at this point that players will get compensation; but that is why we are seeing the contortions by everyone right now about this, and especially the defining silence from the NCAA.

I think he was going the other way. Not playing without students on campus, but more, we have students on campus, so why would we not do football?

Any school and conference that plays fall sports will regret their decision. It's going to wipe out a ton of money and resources, and will end in failure. And they will all face lawsuits for decades over this.

And really, the lawsuits are coming whether sports are played. Its clear that the schools that have decided to be open are doing so based on faith or idiocy, not that they have a plan to do so safely. They have a plan for some safety theater and a lot of winking and nudging.

It's gotten old, watching these dumb actions play out over and over with the same predictable results. Will school and sports in the fall be the last of the dumb things we do before we take this serious?

I cannot stress how lucky my wife and I feel to have out daughter graduated already. I feel for all the parents and students having to trust college presidents and boards of education to take this serious. It feels like we are hurtling towards the the moment that will written about for centuries, as he willingly enter flu season having done nothing to to stem the tide of infections in our country.

I mean, we understand why the flu season happens when it does, right? And we understand that school is the hub for viruses in the world to find new regions to explore, as people bring viruses back from vacation, and college students catch it at school and bring it back to their hometowns.

And we really are just gonna roll into this fall like a catastrophe isn't about to happen.

f*ck sports. It makes too many of us selfish morons.

Admire me, admire my home
Admire my son, he's my clone
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
This land is mine, this land is free
I'll do what I want but irresponsibly
It's evolution, baby!!!

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/xZ9Tkvv.png)

I bet he is isolated and he and everyone around him gets tested regularly. What an evil jackass.

When the NBA shut down, it was an example of the good sports can do. But right now, it is the face of our stupidity.

It's a pandemic. We are on our way to 300K+ deaths by the end of the year. And we ae wasting time and energy trying to create way for one thing known to bring people together into tight spaces, whether it is is a stadium or arena, or it is a bar or private home.

Parents in St. Louis County flipped out when summer s[orts were canceled, citing kids are among the spread. What the parents didn't realize, and needed spelled out for them was that the coaches and kids figured it out just fine. But once games were played, parents were awful, and that meant awful for the staff they needed to run concession stands. It wasn't the kids, it was the parents who could not be trusted.

And we want to roll into college football season like we don't know what will actually happen if games start getting played. Football is event viewing more than any sport. And college basketball is more event viewing than NBA basketball, in terms of bars and homes with large groups.

I mean, that does seem blatantly irresponsible, right?

Jayhawker wrote:

And we want to roll into college football season like we don't know what will actually happen if games start getting played. Football is event viewing more than any sport. And college basketball is more event viewing than NBA basketball, in terms of bars and homes with large groups.

I mean, that does seem blatantly irresponsible, right?

I was thinking about this yesterday too. Even if B12, SEC and ACC football operations can successfully bubble up, do they expect all the fans too as well? I've had the privilege of attending games at tOSU, Texas and Ole Miss. These places live for college football. Is Ole Miss going to play football with no fans in the stadium but expect the Grove to be empty on Gameday? I wouldn't be surprised if there are more people at a bars on 6th Street in Austin watching than in the Stadium in Berkeley on Gameday.

I know its not necessarily the Conference's job to police how or where the fans enjoy the game (as long as its not in the stadium), but isn't the saying "God, Family and [insert team] College Football?". We already know the first two have caused super-spreader events... why stop there?

Now that I think about it... go look at a non-Big Game at stanfurd... you pretty much have plenty of room for 6 foot social distancing without even trying. Maybe the Pac-12 should have just let them play

Is this a cultural thing?

As popular as the Seahawks are, I cannot imagine a world where Seattle bars are packed this fall on Sundays.

West Coast football, pro or college does not come close to southern or midwest college football in terms of fandom. Its not happening for the Atlanta Falcons, Dolphins or maybe not even for the Dallas Cowboys... but Texas, Florida State or Georgia College football? you better believe it.

If I take all of the west coast football teams, Seahawks may be the closest, perhaps Oregon football or maybe USC during its hey day, but both are still far cries from the College football saturdays I witnessed at those the places I mentioned, and they were just playing my school... Cal... hardly some nationally ranked behemoth and most definitely not an in conference opponent.

I was blown away by The Grove when I went to Ole Miss for an 11am local time game... and basically all the locals said "this is nothing" compared to if it was an SEC game at prime time.

And its not necessarily a bar being filled to the brim, but people will gather to watch. Whether its a gathering of 50 people in someone's yard or at the parking lot outside, or somewhere on campus.

A good example of sports making people really, really stupid.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfQ2wuYX0AIHpQU?format=jpg&name=large)

Jayhawker wrote:

A good example of sports making people really, really stupid.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfQ2wuYX0AIHpQU?format=jpg&name=large)

Good god. We really deserve to lose sports until we gain some perspective.

SportZ!

What a UMasshole.

I feel bad for him, must have had a pretty unhappy childhood.

These are the kind of sports stories I hoped to be reading during the pandemic.

A man lived in a Tampa stadium's luxury suite for over 2 weeks before he was arrested, police say

Daniel Albert Neja, 39, was arrested earlier this week when an employee of AI Lang Stadium found blankets in the luxury suite. The stadium is home to the Tampa Bay Rowdies soccer club.

Neja stole up to $1,000 worth of merchandise from the team store as well as $200 worth of food items, according to St. Petersburg police spokeswoman Yolanda Fernandez.

"He got into the merchandise store and was wearing a bunch of team merchandise," Fernandez told CNN. "He made himself quite at home there."

Using surveillance footage, police determined that Neja had been living in the luxury suite since July 26. Neja was arrested shortly after officers got to the stadium, according to Fernandez.

"It's very unusual and it's the sort of thing that probably would only happen during Covid, because under normal circumstances that stadium would be full of people, and luxury suites would be in use and cleaned regularly," she said.

Why do we have enormous, publicly funded structures sitting empty for months each year and people living out of parked cars and in tents under overpasses?

NBA bubble's worked a heck of a lot better so far than I expected. Even without Lou Williams' strip club visit I thought transmission in Florida would be high enough that hospitality workers, through absolutely no fault of their own, would end up bringing the virus in.

NHL'S doing well so far too. Between those two, MLB (which yeah, not great so far) and the Champions & Europa Leagues it's been really nice to be watching sports regularly.

They never seemed to have much of a plan beyond "ineffectually lobby the federal government for money." Bit of a shame because a balanced, 8-game bubble season starting on Labour Day would have been fun.

But it's a gate driven league. I think the only reason the Canadian Premier League is able to have a season right now is the possibility of future transfer fees or solidarity payments.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/HnUzgkU.png)

I know it's only 22% stadium capacity, but it does seem like the NFL is trying to pretend this isn't happening.

A lot of that going on here in the states. Unfortunately.

My thing is the NFL is going to be the NFL. Why are the governments at the city, county, and state level letting this happen? They are supposed to be the adults in the room and tell these business no, you can't put your greed above the safety of our citizens. I think there needs to be more emphasis that they are allowing it to happen, instead of just on the business.

Seems like the NFL has no standard on fans and is leaving it up to each team. Some owners are going to be dumber than others.

I will bet it will come down to local politics.

Dallas will have fans.

Seattle will not.

What will be interesting is when a location's big politics clash with its local politics (see: ATL, MIA, NO, etc.).

I went on Twitter to see what people were saying about this and saw a number of disturbing things.

- Big 10 may actually play their season after all
- Numerous college football superfans pressuring governors to let colleges play
- Talk of students transferring to schools / conferences that haven't shut down play yet

This country is insane.