The list of bad ideas introduced to Boston sports fans through the years is long and winding. The Red Sox once tried to sell us Jack Clark. Then Bullpen by Committee. Now they’re all about Payroll Flexibility. TD Garden officials thought it would be a swell idea to reconfigure seating in the lower bowl of the arena last year. Oh, and remember the campaign to bring the 2024 Olympics to Boston?
Now we have the crazy notion that the Boston College Eagles are planning to play their ACC football schedule this fall while our region tries to get back on its feet in the middle of a global pandemic.
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What in the name of Buddy Garrity is going on around here? Who do we think we are — Clemson, S.C.? Odessa, Texas? Tuscaloosa, Ala.?
Seriously. I understand folks who live in football hotbeds going for this. But Boston, a place where absolutely nobody knows your name if you are associated with college football? Boston, a hub of science, medicine, high-tech, and deep thinking? We are going to have big-time college football here on autumn Saturdays in 2020?
We knew Harvard and Yale weren’t going to play this year. Same with the Patriot League, the NESCAC, and all the quaint little schools that play small-time college football. Those were easy calls. Even Division 1 pretenders UMass and UConn had the good sense to pack away the shoulder pads for the fall. Massachusetts high school football is also closed for the season.
But BC is planning to play North Carolina, Pitt, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, and Louisville in an empty Alumni Stadium. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that BC is going forward to protect its share of ACC TV money. The Eagles’ slice of the ACC pie is in the neighborhood of $30 million annually.
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“The decision by the 15 ACC institutions to proceed with fall sports follows several months of discussion and scenario planning among league members, the ACC Medical Advisory Group, and medical professionals at Boston College,” BC athletic director Pat Kraft said in a statement to the Globe Friday afternoon.
“The health, safety, and well-being of student-athletes, coaches, and staff is at the forefront of all decisions at all times … We will continue to monitor the situation and follow the guidance of our medical advisory group.”
Sorry, but the ship has sailed on college football for 2020. The only places still on board are regions where football conferences are king: the SEC, the Big 12, and the ACC. Take a good look at a map of the USA to see where the vast majority of those schools are located. Then look for the outlier in Chestnut Hill, Mass., and tell me what is wrong with the picture.
The almighty Big Ten deemed football unsafe for the year. This means no football in Ann Arbor, East Lansing, and Columbus. This is a very big deal in those college football towns. You don’t think Nebraska wanted to play football this year? Too bad, Cornhuskers. Science and safety prevailed. Similarly, the Pac-12 shut down its gridirons. USC and UCLA — both bigger than the NFL Rams or Chargers in SoCal — are not playing.
BC is a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, and the ACC has Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech, and Miami — teams playing in regions where football rules and folks appear not to be taking the coronavirus too seriously. The ACC has a whopping television contract and needs programming. It needs opponents. It needs games. It needs Boston College. And that is why planes full of football players from North Carolina and Georgia will be flying into Logan in October.
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The Tar Heels are scheduled to play at BC Oct. 3. Notre Dame is slated to play here in November. Both football programs shut down multiple practices this past week because of a surge in COVID-19 cases on campus. In Chapel Hill, 526 students were moved into isolation Monday. Nearly 14 percent of the school’s virus tests came back positive. In South Bend, five football players tested positive Wednesday and another six were placed in quarantine.
Don't confuse this with the Patriots or the NFL. Though a risky proposition during a pandemic, the NFL features professional athletes opting to work in an environment that can be largely controlled and protected. There's none of that control or protection on a college campus.
BC thus far has done an admirable job testing its players (no positive cases since one in late June) and operating a safe football environment. But the students are coming back to campus, and there’s a strong likelihood that BC will face the kinds of problems we’re currently seeing in Chapel Hill and South Bend.
“Our student-athletes want to play,” Kraft stated. “Our health and safety protocols, which include extensive testing, daily symptoms monitoring, and isolation and quarantine procedures for all members of the BC community, have given our student-athletes, coaches, and staff the confidence that we can return to competition safely. Any student-athlete who wishes not to play can opt out, and their athletic scholarship and place on the team will not be affected.”
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Fine. But we know every college athlete lives with the pressure of pleasing coaches and protecting his or her place on the team.
Listen to Dr. Carlos del Rio, associate dean at the Emory School of Medicine and a coronavirus adviser to the NCAA.
“I feel like the Titanic,” del Rio said Aug. 13 after the Big Ten and Pac-12 canceled football. “We have hit the iceberg and we’re trying to make decisions of what time should we have the band play.”
This is nuts. The NCAA has announced that all Division 1 fall sports championships are canceled, and still football proceeds in the ACC and at BC.
BC is allowing itself to be infected by the Clemsonization of its conference. The ultimate contact sport is moving ahead strictly because of TV money.
Too bad. Get out.
We are Boston. We are about science and knowledge.
This is insanity. And it’s dangerous.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at daniel.shaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @dan_shaughnessy.
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For Boston College to go ahead with football during the pandemic is not worth the risk - The Boston Globe
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