Rochelobe

Yeah if I was a ND fan that would really piss me off as well. Don't go through the whole thing of bringing in ND for one year when you were really just delaying your decision.

I'd like to see Nebraska play football this fall if at all possible, but hate to be lumped in with guys that say things like this: https://touchdownwire.usatoday.com/2020/08/11/lou-holtz-notre-dame-college-football-when-they-stormed-normandy-they-knew-there-were-going-to-be-casualties/ To me, making these types of comparisons cheapens the sacrifice of those that died on the beaches. Then he follows up with: This is more reasonable, but makes his comparison to Normandy even dumber. I doubt anyone storming the beaches at Normandy could just say "oh, I have asthma, I should be able to opt out." Yeah, I know Holtz is an idiot, but ugh.

Sort of like cleaning your house by burning it down.

Howard is a clown. Always has been. He's just desperately trying to say something, anything, to be relevant with no football season this fall. People already basically don't pay much attention to him anyway. With no football this fall, he basically disappears. And for people that have a "need" to be visible and worshiped by the public, they struggle with being ignored. I'd say not even responding to him on his twitter feed is the best approach. Starve him.

That would be a game changer as far as having Nebraska play this fall. If say, behind the scenes, OSU was working on playing games against the SEC/ACC and then contacted Nebraska to build a united front, that would make it easier. If OSU and/or Michigan decided they were going to play, the Big Ten would (99.99% probability) not kick them out. At this point, the only school that has said anything publicly is Nebraska. The others have followed the official conference statement. Whether or not they are doing something behind the scenes we can't be sure. I would actually give a higher probability to the power brokers of the Big Ten trying to influence the NCAA behind the scenes to cancel/de-sanction all fall sports for every conference.

Who wants to initiate the "Will there be a (fall) 2021 football season" thread?

I do some part time teaching at a community college. On occasion, I have had confidential reports that do include student medical information, if it is somehow relevant to the education experience. This site has a fair amount of information on what HIPAA means to college environments vice FERPA: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=847c698c-493c-4939-b2f4-0ed15f79f69e

Yeah people that just want to throw away the academic benefits are being shortsighted, I feel. Nebraska was accepted by the Big Ten because they wanted to improve their football profile and get a conference championship game, and I think they felt Nebraska was just barely qualified academically. Nebraska has a chance over the next 20 years or so to undergo some serious academic improvement due to the association with other Big Ten schools. We've only been in for 10 years - upgrading the educational programs takes time. Football is very important to Nebraska (both the university and the state). No arguing that. But it is not the only thing that is important - major universities exist for education and research. Sports is a branding exercise that schools use to raise funds that we can all enjoy. However, I think it would be even harder to recruit since right now Nebraska is not exactly a hot school for star high school players. Without exposure through a major conference TV deal, would most top flight recruits even care. I know it is fashionable to talk about Nebraska work ethic, but it is pretty hard for a school like Nebraska to compete at the top level by simply using a bunch of kids in a low population state that doesn't generate a lot of highly ranked talent every year. You have to work ethic, coaching, and talent to consistently be in the top 10. Missing any of those leads to, well 4-8 seasons. And I know basketball isn't important to many of you, but how exactly would Nebraska fill 29 games a year without 18 conference games? That schedule would be ugly. Unless Nebraska is willing to become a "road" team and give home games to other power conference teams disproportionately. Otherwise most major conference teams would have little motivation to schedule us in basketball. May Nebraska basketball and all other minor sports could just join the Summit (or whatever conference UNO is in). If this was Nebraska football of the 1990s it would be easier to pull off - at that time Nebraska would have been able to possibly strike a deal with a major network, similar to Notre Dame (not for as much money most likely, but probably more net income than the old Big 8/Big XII shares of the day). However, does Nebraska have that type of cachet today? This is a team working on three losing seasons in a row. If Nebraska challenges the Big Ten to try and call their bluff, they may well find themselves on the outside with nowhere to go. If Nebraska goes independent, who will they play from year to year? I doubt any Big Ten schools would play them anytime in the near future. Maybe some of the Big XII schools? Outside of Oklahoma in football and Kansas a couple times in basketball, they don't seem to be straining to play us. How many a year could you expect to play? So what do you end up with, a lot of games against really weak teams in order to get enough home games to make up for the loss of revenue from the Big Ten TV deal?

Most likely we'd have to turn the game on and just figure it out by who is not playing (when a starter tests positive). Agree that release of PHI would be restricted for the schools unless the player agrees to have the information released.

People keep thinking the only reason for conferences is for sports. I guess that is reasonable since in the old Big 8, and particularly in the Big XII, there wasn't as much intra-conference interaction among the schools as compared to the Big Ten. As important as college football is to the "brand" of many major universities, shouldn't educational considerations be considered more important? When I was an undergraduate at UNL, we did take a trip to KU for some cooperative research. But that had more to do with the prof I had at UNL being a collaborator with the profs at KU, from before both profs came to the Big 8. I did graduate work at OU, and even before the Big XII formed, OU did a lot more academic cross over work with Texas than they did with the other Big 8 schools. From talking to my old profs at Nebraska in the late 90s, they didn't indicate any particular benefit academically from being in the same conference as Texas (which has fairly high academic rankings). I wonder how much most people's nostalgia for the Big 8 has to do with the fact that NU was good and typically 4 of the teams in any given year were usually pretty bad (almost always automatic Ws KSU, KU, ISU), 2 were ok/good (some mix of Mizz, CU, OSU lifting up from the bad category) and 1 was great (OU). Had NU had a chance to move to the Big Ten in 1960, just coming off a terrible 20 years, would people 10 years later have felt the same nostalgia for the Big 8? Did I like the Big 8 days because of the "rivalries" with the other teams? Or did I like the Big 8 days because Nebraska was dominant? For me its pretty much the latter. I don't care who Nebraska plays. I just want them to improve and play for conference championships regularly. If 5 years from now, Frost has led Nebraska to a couple conference titles, I think a fair amount of that nostalgia will go away.

Other countries have managed to even have international play - the UEFA Champions League finished up their incomplete round of 16 games with having teams travel out of their country to play. They are going to stay in a bubble for the final rounds, but the fact that they successfully did this shows that mitigation methods were successful enough. And yes, the Big Ten (and now perhaps Pac 12) are being very risk adverse, probably heavily due to liability concerns, but I'm not sure we can say they are more risk adverse than European countries. Many on this board probably feel that Europe is dominated by "communistic socialist over litigious wimps" (except of course Russia), however even if true, they followed their mitigations and are having success. They are seeing some raise in counts in different areas, but they seem to be doing a good job of stamping it down by region when there is a flareup. A big part of that has been compliance on part of their citizens. Has it been perfect compliance? Of course not. But it seems they do have better compliance, as well as more dedication from the governments/law enforcement to enforce compliance as well. How many people have actually been fined for non-compliance despite many areas having fines listed? I have not heard of many cases. Had the various US authorities (state/local working in coordination with the feds) been more aggressive, they probably could have generated enough in fines to cover any tax shortfalls due to business shutdown

Wait - you want them to do their job? It has always seemed to me that the NCAA is weak when it comes to things like this, since they basically represent a consensus rule of all the major conferences (I suppose the minor conferences as well, but it is heavily weighted toward what the P5 want). Maybe if the SEC/ACC/Big XII all cancel/postpone we will see some actual NCAA-level plans. Until then there probably won't be, since there is no consensus at this point.

Ugh. The game of a thousand fumbles. The one where Niles Paul was completely in the open and just fumbled it on the sideline.....

The 95 team trailed Wash St until early in the 2nd quarter (trailed for a total of ~9 minutes) and trailed Florida twice (for a total of about 5 minutes), until again, early in the 2nd quarter. Other than that, the pretty much trashed everyone from the start of the game. Out of 12 games (48 quarters), Nebraska scored in all but 4 of those quarters. The 97 team had 5 quarters where they didn't score (in a 13 game season), so very comparable. The 97 team trailed for around ~20 min (~12 to Missouri, ~8 to Central Florida), against very comparable, considering the 97 team played one more game. The 97 team had back to back shutouts, the 95 team had two (not back to back) shutouts. I think there is evidence that 95 and 97 are more comparable than many people remember. I think for most people, the reason for dropping 97 is due to the Missouri game. The 95 team didn't have any game that approached that type of back and forth. Areas where I think '95 showed they were the best: Only the Colorado game in 95 was closer than 14 points at any point in the 4th quarter (13 points at the start of the quarter). The Washington State came got exactly to 14 points at the end. In '97, Central Florida, Missouri, Washington and Colorado were all closer than 14 points at some time during the 4th quarter (in fact each was a one score game or a Nebraska deficit at some point during the 4th quarter). I'd give a slight edge to '95 for that - they were never in a situation where one blown play in the 4th quarter would have meant the other team tied or took the lead. However, '97 definitely showed they could play in a tight game late in the 4th, so I understand why they would be a favorite for you. Couple that with the off field problems in '95, and I can see even more reason to have enjoyed '97 more. The other reason I give a slight nod to 95 - every starter on defense (except Farley) played/started at least one NFL game. And the only reason Farley didn't had nothing to do with talent. 97 had a lot of great players but I don't think they were quite that stacked. However, Ahman Green was possibly the most successful Nebraska player in the NFL from the 93-97 run of 60-3 (if NFL success is a consideration). Wistrom, Minter, Stai, Wiegert, Williams all had good careers. I may have overlooked someone else, but Green was probably the most successful. No matter, this is certainly a happier argument to have vs what is currently going on.

So the metric system makes for different science? Interesting. Sweden also has a much higher death rate per million than its nearest neighbors. Sweden: 571 Norway: 47 Finland: 60 Denmark: 107 The strategy of the country you held up as an act of brilliance on dealing with the pandemic managed to lower things, just like its nearest neighbors did. Except they did it at 5 times the death rate. I guess you can claim success in that they seem to have moved past it, if you consider the higher death rate no big deal. Denmark is having what looks like a spike right now in positive cases - which could be due to the fact it is connected to a much more populated part of Europe (with Germany and France nearby), while the other three are more isolated. Even so, Denmark had a death rate 5x less than Sweden. They haven't seen an uptick in deaths yet, but that may be 2 or 3 weeks out. And you are welcome for your education. I do agree with you that we could not stay locked down forever. I feel the critical time was in the first 6 weeks. A much stronger lockdown with a much higher testing plan during the critical March/April time frame and mandatory masks as we moved out into reopening would have helped us. Some places had stay at home, others did not. In those cases stay at home != lockdown. We had nothing close to the types of lockdowns in Europe. Some of that is due to American thought process (backed in some respects by the Constitution). However, tighter restrictions were put in place at times during the 1918-1920 pandemic within the US. Politically it would have been harder to do today, but had we had effective leadership at the Federal level, these restrictions could have been put in place more effectively by the Governors. However, we instead dealt with deflection, minimization of the extent of the problem, and straight out refutation of the science supporting what needed to be done.

A driving reason for why the US response sucks is that there is no US response. We tried to work it as 50 different countries, yet each of those "countries" did not have the resources (after the administration took a large amount of PPE originally destined for the states). Had there been a comprehensive response from the federal government - which is basically what happened in virtually every other country that has started to resume some aspect of normalcy, the probable result is that the US would have lower death count and be more likely to be playing football this fall. So, the arguments about how the US is "different" really gets old. Yes there are some differences, but there is a mechanism in place within the constitution that says the feds can step in to certain types of emergencies. That did not happen in the US. So if everything is different in terms of how the virus affects the US are you implying that the biology of the virus is unique and different in the US and that is ? That proven scientifically based methods used in other countries will not work in the US? What other things don't work the same in the US? Chemistry? Engineering? Or is it only the virus? Please elucidate.

So, someone stated the whole reason the US curve was different was due to all the extra testing meaning we had swept up a lot more asymptomatic cases which was different than other countries. I assembled this data since the response that the US had outlier asymptomatic detection required a comparison. What is your data to refute that? You keep saying everything is wrong and false after you see numbers? Is the reason you disagree due to the fact you don't live in the US? Do you live in alternate-US instead? I heard they did a great job going from only 15 cases to 0. In that case, yes, they did a great job flattening the curve.

The theoretical scenario is discussing serious/fatal cases - those requiring hospitalization. Yes, the overall numbers include asymptomatic cases. Then, in the scenario you describe, if we have way more asymptomatic tests, then we should have a much lower death rate per case than similar countries. In other words, if extra testing is simply doing a better job of revealing asymptomatic cases within the US vs other countries, we should have a much lower rate of death per million than those similar countries. Here is the date for the top ten countries in terms of number of cases, comparing their death rates (per million), cases rate (per million), and the death rate per cases: Country Cases Deaths/Million Cases/Million Deaths/Total Cases United States 5,251,000 502 15,855 0.0317 Brazil 3,057,000 479 14,373 0.0333 India 2,267,000 33 1,641 0.0201 Russia 892,000 103 6,117 0.0168 South Africa 563,000 179 9,490 0.0189 Mexico 486,000 411 3,764 0.1092 Peru 478,000 638 14,476 0.0441 Colombia 398,000 258 7,805 0.0331 Chile 375,000 530 19,601 0.0270 Spain 370,000 611 7,915 0.0772 So, if the reason the US has so many more cases is because we find more asymptomatic cases vs the rest of the world (due to all the extra testing we do), we would then expect the US to have a lower Deaths/Total Cases ratio, since we would have more "benign" cases of coronavirus. Looking at the top 10 countries, and the US ranks 5th out of 10 countries. To me, this indicates that the US rate of asymptomatic detection is not particularly higher or lower than the rest of the world. I would expect the US to have better health care, on average, than Brazil, India, Peru, Colombia, and Chile. Yet two of those countries have a lower rate of deaths per cases than the US, two have comparable levels to the US and one has a higher death rate. India and Russia are both lower than the US, but I wonder if this is due to how they diagnosis the cause of death - perhaps they just say pneumonia and leave it at that. Before looking at this data I would have expected them to have higher death rates per cases than the US. It looks like Mexico is still in the early stages of testing - they only seem to test those that are seriously ill, thus the death rate that is currently 3x higher than the US. If Mexico starts to ramp up testing we will see if they start to fall more in line with the other countries. The only "early outbreak" country on this list is Spain and their rate is also very high, although I would assume they are still doing a lot of testing. Their high death rate per case may be due to the fact that not much was known about treatment when they suffered through their outbreak. Something similar may have happened in NYC as well - we've seen much lower death rates per cases in the US since then, and I think, based on what we see above, it is not really due to some incredible increase in asymptomatic cases relative to serious/fatal cases. My thought is the reality is diluted somewhat by the additional testing we do in the US - we are probably still missing some asymptomatic cases due to false negatives, which if they tested positive would lower the US rate some. At this time I don't think the number is significant, but it may be bigger than we think.

no message, see later response

Do you understand the definition of "flattening the curve"? This is flattening the curve: Meanwhile in the US, the curve looks like this: We plateaued and then started up again after Memorial Day and we continue to rise. Note this graph is of Active Cases - meaning Positive Tests - Cases with Resolutions (recovery or death) As far as no health care systems being overwhelmed, I'm not so sure in the case of New York (City). Anytime you have so many bodies piling up so fast you have to use refrigerated trucks to store all the bodies you have a problem. Unless, that is, one considers it a bonus to have enough people die that hospital beds keep opening up, for the next set of ready to die victims. And looking at things from the point of each US state being a separate "country" is EXACTLY why we are in such bad shape as a nation - States do not have the right to just close off their borders to all other states (nor would they since they need truck traffic, etc.). With policies that vary radically from state to state, we ended up with a hodge-podge that basically left certain areas doing ok, then getting a delayed explosion in cases. Florida, for example. This hodge-podge meant that things like sports, happening across all states (football teams are going to have to travel across 1 or more state boundaries for ~1/2 of their games) left the situation very tenuous.

Yes, flatten the curve, as was done in other countries was the goal. We failed. European countries did not just reach a plateau and call it good. They made sure that the incremental increase in cases per day was very small - so on an overall plot of new cases per day, they actually curved down from where they were. In many US states, things were reopened when the new cases per day had plateaued. While that is an important step (you don't want a situation where the number of new cases each day is increasing over the previous day), simply holding steady only means you've started to cope with the problem. If your plateau is at 3000 new cases per day in a state, that doesn't really help hospitals that much, since we know the treatment timelines for Covid, once hospitalized, can take weeks. We need to flatten things by making the line that represents the total number of cases be as flat as possible - meaning very few cases are being added per day. Following this methodology, European soccer leagues were able to finish their seasons (and are now playing the completion of EUFA Champions League) without any major outbreaks in positive tests among players/support personnel. I think there have been more positive tests among MLB players/personnel in the 2 weeks since restart than all of the major European soccer leagues combined. US new cases per day rates were still high in many states when things started being reopened. Also, a really low number where states don't have to worry about other states (which we have not had in place) would have really helped with trying to play football. How can we expect inter-state coordination on sporting teams when they struggle to coordinate on shutdowns? In the end, a coordinated Federal plan (all states follow the same shutdown criteria, interstate travel is greatly limited - even intrastate travel is limited), coupled with better compliance by American citizens (wearing masks) applied for 6 weeks or so would likely have had us in a much better situation today. It would have sucked worse than the ~4-6 weeks of inconsistent partial shutdowns we went through, but based upon what we see in other countries, we most likely wouldn't be having 50,000 new cases per day 5 months out. In the end, this is was a big factor that made playing football less likely.

Yes. Weren't there reports of New Yorkers fleeing all the way to Florida, etc. as well, with no restrictions placed on their travel?

The United States? No. We never had a federally mandated policy. States did differing amounts of "stay at home" type orders, but no consistent response. I believe Ricketts never issued a stay at home order for Nebraska. Also, the stay at home orders in the US didn't have any where near the strictness that some other countries implemented. Some places levied severe fines if you were caught exercising outside, by yourself (Paris). Without a consistent federal policy that was applied across all parts of the US it was always going to be hard to turn around and engage in a nationwide endeavor like holding a college football season. Once you had places like New Jersey and Illinois (or maybe just Chicago) quarantining travelers from other states (including Nebraska), it was going to make having players go on the road and play very difficult - unless lots of waivers were given for sports teams. They've sort of done that for MLB teams, but we already see there are issues. The rate of positive cases would be much higher for college football with more teams, more players per team, etc.

(I hate quoting myself, but I left off one additional thought) The US is going 50+ ways in our everyday plans and then tries to play sports which involve interactions across state lines. While not the only reason for failure, this is clearly a contributing factor in making it harder to play this season.

For the most part, the US has actually had 50 approaches (maybe more if you consider cities - Lincoln is different than Omaha, etc.) that had very little coordination between them. US states are not really set up to negotiate "treaties" with each other. They tend to default to the Federal Government for all inter-state coordination. Its like suddenly the US decided to rename itself the "Corona-Prussian Empire".