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When’s the last time you looked forward to the actual mail? It’s nothing but gutter cleaning offers and coupons for free home pest inspections. Does anyone write letters anymore?
This mailbag is a hell of a lot more interesting. Let’s empty it out!
This, from Tom Bux: I set out to change that over the past three months. I started writing tons of letters to friends and family. I have a 2-inch-thick stack of mail.
That is brilliant. Is it OK if I send you one of those type-written catching-up-with-the-family-you-didn’t-really-wanna-know-about Christmas letters after the College Football Season of Doom is terminated?
This, from Roopande Patel Dirrig: I look forward to getting my mail-in ballot request.😉
You can’t possibly be looking forward to it any more than I am.
This from Jeff White: The latest update on whether or not there will be college football this fall?
One of the worst aspects of many about the Twittersphere is that anytime an opinion is asked of a writer and it’s expressed, some dingleberry watchman files it away to be possibly used as a Bad Take Revisited. This is potentially one of those. But I don’t care because I realize Twitter is full of those people and that’s basically all they do in their lives.
You’re asking me in late June what I think will happen two and three months down the road and this is what I’d guess now: I think we’re in for a whack-a-mole s---show of epic proportions.
I think it’s possible all the major conferences will attempt a start-up of games. I think the SEC will be most aggressive in trying to power through the inevitable COVID infections. But I don’t think anyone will finish the season and no one may even start it. I just don’t see how it works.
It’s football, not golf. It’s the ultimate contact sport with 22 bodies, more than any other major athletic event, crashing together about 150 times in three hours. And that’s only talking about the games themselves.
The training required and the number of potential contact points shared by well upward of 100 athletes and staff members, merely within the football program, is pretty much a giant super-spreader. One mistake in sanitary protocol can be multiplied exponentially within hours.
And for everyone who says young athletes are much less prone to serious illness from COVID, I respond threefold:
1. It only takes one acute infection or death to begin asking why we’re doing this (that answer is, profit for university athletic departments and television networks).
2. Young athletes are by no means the only ones at risk within a giant athletic department employing dozens of middle-aged staffers.
3. Who’s taking on the cost of liability? I still have not heard a good answer to that. This is not a professional sport where the athletes are represented by a union, collectively sign off on acceptable risk and are totally covered for any illness within or without the franchise compound.
These are unpaid amateurs with no representation. I’m just waiting for the first example of a personal waiver handed out to college players asking them in cryptic fine print to absolve the university of all liability beyond initial treatment.
Anyway, money makes it all go. And I think, at some point, universities face the fact that the cost – of adequate testing for all their fall varsity athletes (not just football players), mitigating possible liability and implementing sanitary safeguards for game days with the possibly allowing a limited number of fans, media and staff into stadiums – begins to approach the payoff of playing football this fall.
Maybe they give it another shot in the spring (March-to-June) if a vaccine becomes readily available in January or February, in order to fulfill TV contract obligations within the universities’ fiscal year ending June 30, 2021. But, at this point, with new cases still rising in many states, I don’t see how it happens in the fall.
This, from Eric Book: This, from Audrey in State College: Where do you think the statue is?
Oh, wise guy, eh? I’ll just say, I do not happen to share Ms. Snyder’s fascination with this mystery, though I’m sure there are thousands and thousands who do. I don’t care where it is.
Further and on a completely separate note, I think we could do well to end our weird practice of idealizing in iron and bronze humans of fallible flesh. When they begin ripping out statues of Teddy Roosevelt, another flawed individual who was nonetheless one of the most accomplished, progressive, energetic, eclectic and thoughtful people this country has ever produced, it’s time to rethink building them at all. Apparently, nobody can any longer live up to standards of perfection that such memorials imply.
This, from Dennis Moore: Any discussion of a total change to what colleges could offer their athletes and fans? One-on-one football passing games, one-on-one pass blocking vs pass rush. Wear masks. Televise it. One on one basketball, your top five play our top five, like in tennis. Less chance of spreading any viruses. You can still have UNC vs Duke in hoops, Ohio State vs Michigan in football. Televise them from the multi-million-dollar practice facilities they all have now. It's probably only one year, keeps the kids competing and getting better for next season, and people will watch.
I’ll give you an A for effort in creative marketing. And I guess you might attract the same viewership that tunes in 7-on-7 games and the NFL Combine. But, I don’t think I would watch any of these. Probably not. … Unless there was nothing else.
OK, I’m intrigued. Just for argument’s sake, what constitutes a win in the pass-blocking/rush competition? Does the D-lineman have to touch an inflatable quarterback within a prescribed time? Is it a round-robin with three OTs and three DEs from each school going up against counterparts from the other? Do we have a clock on each competition and the OT and DE with the best composite times meet in a grand final? Does Dave Witvoet come out of retirement to officiate? Can he hit the OT in the head with his flag if he sees holding? Is the inflatable QB painted to look like Philip Rivers? Steve Tensi? Norm Snead? I need some answers before we move forward on this. Have them ready at the next meeting.
This, from P.J. McSweeney: Hey I have a sports question. ESPN has apparently been showing a lot of Korean baseball, as they've been cleared to go live. Any observations about the difference between the MLB and the Korean variety?
Two. I can’t understand the advertisements. And I was hoping to hear a Korean version of Tom McCarthy, but to no avail.
This, from Daniel Bopp: How would you (hypothetically) align the Power Five to form 8 conferences (champion of each gets playoff slot)? All conferences play round robin, no playoffs. Geographical locations & long rivalries could be maybe 3rd, 4th or 5th considerations. Reduce bowls to about 20, max.
Now, that, is the ultimate hypothetical question. Because this will never happen. But I kinda-wanna see how it works, so what the hell.
I did a version of this last year just for my own amusement, but I kept the power conferences at five and simply rearranged them to place them back in their rightful neighborhoods. The point was to imagine them before all the conference-hopping began with Penn State’s invitation to the Big Ten in 1989 (made official in 1990, finally implemented in 1993).
But, if we realigned the Power Five into the Power Eight, I’d still do it geographically to maximize efficiency of travel:
The Pacific 8 Conference is exactly as it was in the 1970s before the Arizona schools were welcomed aboard and way before Utah and Colorado:
Washington
Washington State
Oregon
Oregon State
California
Stanford
UCLA
Southern California
The Tumbleweeds Conference combines the old Big 8 plains schools with three from the old 1970s WAC:
Arizona
Arizona State
Utah
Colorado
Kansas
Kansas State
Nebraska
Iowa State
The New Southwest Conference is a lot like the 1970s scandal-ridden version where if you weren’t cheatin’ you weren’t tryin', except with Southern Methodist, Houston and Rice left out and original members Oklahoma and Oklahoma State back in:
Texas
Texas Tech
Texas A&M
Texas Christian
Baylor
Oklahoma
Oklahoma State
Arkansas
The B1G West Conference is the current Big Ten West division with Mizzou brought in from the SEC:
Minnesota
Wisconsin
Iowa
Missouri
Illinois
Northwestern
Purdue
Indiana
The Gulf Coast Conference unites the entire Sunshine State with the Deep South of the SEC:
Louisiana State
Mississippi
Mississippi State
Alabama
Auburn
Florida
Florida State
Miami
The Biscuits-n-Gravy League is a perfect combo of three ACC and five SEC schools, two each from four states, that just belong together:
Kentucky
Louisville
Tennessee
Vanderbilt
Georgia
Georgia Tech
South Carolina
Clemson
The Association of Overcast Universities combines the nation’s most pious alumni with its most depressing weather:
Michigan
Michigan State
Ohio State
Pittsburgh
Penn State
Syracuse
Rutgers
Boston College
The Appalachian League links up a lot of the old ACC with perennial nomad West Virginia:
North Carolina
North Carolina State
Duke
Wake Forest
Virginia
Virginia Tech
West Virginia
Maryland
So, that’s 8x8 which, now that I consult Mrs. McFadden’s 1st-grade multiplication tables, turns out to be 64. Who’s the missing 65th? Notre Dame, of course. It would refuse to be a part of any conference.
To which I say, in the words of Milo O’Shea in The Verdict: “You want to be independent? Be independent now. I have no sympathy for you.”
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