Shall We Play a Game?

I sometimes feel the future of the 2020 football season is like a new Cold War. If only for the war of words expressed to the press and public by various pundits, league Presidents, coaches and fans. It is an issue that strikes deep into the heart of the sport. The nature and variety of response to the Covid-19 phenomenon among the Power Five conferences is a direct split of opinion that is as divisive as any other in the last century since the invention of the forward pass or the addition of face masks.

The real kind on helmets, not the fabric ones of the current day.

Personally as many people must, I have my own opinions both on the illness itself, the various responses, and the measures being discussed and taken. But I feel this is not the venue for me to express those particularly, as the length of this article would be insufficient space to delve into how and why the American public could argue for so long over $4.4 Trillion spent in the course of two decade-or-more-long wars on another continent yet not even blink when $3.3 Trillion was spent in a single week last spring.

Too short by about a thousand pages. Maybe even more. But we can save that for another day.

In the current vein of this article, the issues seem to boil down to whether College Football, or any organized sport can be played, observed and supported safely. Safely for the players on the field, safely for the staffs and supporting officials and safely for fans in the stadium. The Power Five conferences have ruled and the split in response, action and resolve has produced both a geographic and philosophical split that stretches from ocean to ocean and Lakes to Gulf.

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