Playing fall college football is still a bad idea. The ACC and SEC should accept that
The ACC and SEC athletic conferences — which have Clemson and South Carolina, respectively, as members — are going ahead with plans to play college football this fall amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is a bad idea.
Still.
Why?
The list of reasons is both long and damning.
No real evidence
▪ Several college programs have already had numerous football players test positive for COVID-19 — including an SEC member, Vanderbilt, which has just halted practice sessions because of a coronavirus outbreak.
And this is happening even before a single college football game has been played between two teams with scores of players coming into intense and continuous physical contact with each other.
▪ Only two major sports have been able to play games without being forced to cancel some due to positive COVID-19 tests — and that’s because they’re competing in bio-secure bubbles.
▪ A 2020 college football season won’t be a truly legitimate one — not when two major conferences, the Big 10 and PAC-12, have wisely decided to postpone play until next spring.
Indeed even legendary former Clemson head coach Danny Ford recently suggested that any national champion crowned during a fall 2020 season will have an “asterisk” next to its accomplishment.
If it’s not possible to have all of the best teams playing in a competition, there’s little point in carrying out a hollow shell of season full of “Yeah ... but” results and debates.
▪ Neither the SEC nor ACC has offered compelling evidence that football can be played in consistently safe fashion this fall — not unless you consider vague optimism and blustering comments by pandering politicians in states with ACC or SEC schools to be “compelling evidence.”
▪ The medical community has largely scoffed at the dubious theory that college football players have lower odds of contracting COVID-19 than other college students.
▪ The callous “Oh, it’s just like getting the flu” crowd is flat-out wrong when it contends that if a college football player does contract COVID-19, he’ll quickly recover because of his elite physical condition.
There is plenty of powerful testimony to suggest otherwise — and it comes from the multitude of college players who are still struggling to regain full health after catching COVID-19.
Why not wait?
The above list of reasons are all facts.
How can anyone objectively look at them and still make a persuasive case that it makes sense for the ACC and SEC to blindly plunge into a fall football season while COVID-19 remains a lethal threat?
Well, they can’t.
Nor can they offer a good answer to this simple question:
What irreversible harm would occur if the ACC and SEC joined many of their peers and just put off football for a few more months?
Yes, Gov. Henry McMaster has said that it’s “very important” for college football to be played in South Carolina.
But would college football in this state lose any importance, significance or economic value if it was played in January 2021 instead of next month?
No.
Would there really be long-lasting, transformational damage done to college football’s place in South Carolina if we delayed it for four months — and bought more breathing space for both our state and country as we continue to fight a respiratory-based killer virus?
No.
So why not just wait?
Still time
While the ACC and SEC remain fixated on starting their football seasons late next month, there is still time for them to abandon an undertaking so poorly reasoned that it takes one’s breath away.
But they need to use that rapidly dwindling time in a wise way.
They should ponder the very serious potential consequences of playing football this fall — and call off their unwise plans to do so.
This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 8:52 AM with the headline "Playing fall college football is still a bad idea. The ACC and SEC should accept that."