Are We Nuts???

What are we thinking? How can we possibly think we're going to see a normal football season this fall? I'm talking NFL, College, and High School. What is everybody thinking?

Max Olsen of The Athletic wrote a piece about Oklahoma State's attempt to to get football started and it sounds like they're doing an amazing job but this is going to be impossible to replicate for most schools. Of the 150 people who checked in which included 30 players and 120 staff, three tested positive. Among them is All Big 12 Linebacker Amen Ogbongbemiga who believes he contracted it at a protest that he attended. We know this because he tweeted the results as a public safety warning to his fellow protesters.

After attending a protest in Tulsa AND being well protective of myself, I have tested positive for COVID-19. Please, if you are going to protest, take care of yourself and stay safe.

— Amen Ogbongbemiga (@closedprayer) June 3, 2020

Oklahoma state has the advantage of an on-campus COVID-19 lab that provides results within 24 hours at a capacity of 2,000 tests per day. That's obviously useful but it doesn't change anything about the process that follows. Anyone who tests positive goes to a quarantine dorm (which sounds like that title of a B movie from 1988) for two weeks. Meanwhile staff initiates a process of contact tracing and retesting. This is at a time when there are very few students on campus even under normal circumstances, and the Cowboys don't have a game for another 3 months!

Let's also not forget that Oklahoma State received a $165 million dollar donation from T. Boone Pickens in 2005, the largest in NCAA history. Before his death last year, ol' T. Boone had donated about a quarter bil to Cowboy athletics. So this joint has resources.

Oklahoma State isn't the only program that has had players test positive. Alabama, Auburn, Texas, Florida State, UCF, and Boise State have all had positive tests. Not a lot of poverty on that list. This comes as no surprise either, almost 2.5 million Americans have tested positive. Programs are having players return now to troubleshoot when there are no upcoming games. But there's no way every program in the country will have nearly enough resources keep their unpaid players safe.

Meanwhile, COVID cases are on the rise in 21 states including Florida where the NBA is set to resume play at the end of July AND the GOP will now hold its National Trump Rally. Despite all this some programs are talking about having fans at their games even at a reduced capacity.

So I ask, have we all lost our minds? How can we think it's possible that all these things are going to happen when this is the "good news" of the day:

Deaths below 1,000 on a mid-week day, which is good news (that didn't used to happen very often). But otherwise... not so great. It's really looking more like a plateau than a decline.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 11, 2020

I think it's awful to ask student athletes to be guinea pigs for sports to come back, especially when the interest in them as a student isn't even being considered. This is obviously about money, everything is. The NCAA generated $804 million dollars in TV revenue last year using college students as unpaid labor, and they'll do what it takes to get them on to the field.

When it comes to high school however there is far less money at stake, and far fewer resources at most schools. Connecticut and New Jersey recently announced their guidelines for school sports in the summer and fall, with New York holding out until the end of July. I don't think New York will have any regrets about slow rolling this.