Rochelobe

I'm sure having an apparent disagreement between Harbaugh and Michigan's President/Chancellor adds fuel to the fire, something which isn't (apparently) going on at Nebraska.

In light of covid, instead of tracking aircraft IDs should we be tracking zoom meeting links? The way the Big Ten has handled this, they will probably do their vote via a zoom meeting and forget to lock it down.

I think they probably kept hoping things would work out well. European soccer leagues managed to finish their season with only minor issues. MLB has had a lot of problems so far. So I think they took a wait and see attitude. I think the preliminary findings on covid induced myocarditis in younger people may have spurred them to the final decision. In the end, the mycarditis effect may be minimal, but risk aversion may have taken over. https://www.si.com/.amp/college/2020/08/09/ncaa-cardiac-inflamation-coronavirus-myocarditis-concerns Had the US managed to reduce the number of positive cases walking around, then the combination of: small number of positives * small rate of serious effects from covid = really small number may have been an acceptable risk. But with the US still having fairly high positive rates and not knowing the myocarditis effect, it probably raised the risk for them too much. And, as many have already pointed out on this thread - there is also the potential for the more cynical "stop the players from unionizing/forcing a work stoppage/getting a bigger piece of the pie/etc." In which case, covid is a convenient way to cancel the season while they get a handle on the future of college athletics. Things will probably be very different in college sports by fall 2021, even if some kind of covid vaccine is available. At this point things will never return to "normal" - the normal of the 1980s - 2019 (ever since the Supreme Court ruling that opened up the television money floodgates).

That was humorous? Hmm. Yeah. ok.

Can't believe I needed to use the /s Are so many people that humorless?

As bad as a winter with no sports would be, imagine how much worse it would have been 40 years ago before the internet, streaming, etc. We can just make this thread our official sport for 2020! Whoever scores the most smileys wins!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2020/08/03/michigan-football-damon-payne-jermain-crowell-alabama-football/5571106002/ So, is this caused by the high school coach (Crowell)? Harbaugh being an idiot? Or something else? Of course just because it may be due to either Crowell or something else doesn't preclude Harbaugh still being an idiot.

The SEC just said "thanks, no thanks" to the ACC. Yesterday, the ACC announced that they would play one non-conference game, with each team playing the game somewhere in the home state of the ACC team. Presumably so Clemson-South Carolina, Georgia Tech-Georgia and Florida State-Florida would all still be played. All those games now cancelled.

I suppose they wanted to avoid the potential embarrassment of having Notre Dame play 10 ACC games, go 10-0, and have the rest of the teams all lose at least 1 game. Pretty hard to say team X was a real champion in that scenario.

So what do you think about Notre Dame being an "unofficial official" member of the ACC for 2020?

Now confirmed: https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/acc-football-schedule-2020-notre-dame-joins-league-for-11-game-season-with-one-nonconference-contest/

Oops, sorry saw your post after I made mine.

I like your list except if you want to keep drama front and center, how about replacing week 8 with the 2013 Hail Mary game against Northwestern?

I think this is a possibility. If the season starts to become herky-jerky fairly early on (like the Marlins having to postpone an entire week of games) and the NCAA rules on eligibility of players that sit out (or the season ends after only 2 or 3 games). If the NCAA makes the decision to grant an extra year of eligibility across the board but decides not to allow for expanded scholarship amounts, that would really tighten things up and would probably cause a surge in early NLI signings. And given the NCAA's history I'm sure they will find a way to do the stupidest possible choice in dealing with the scholarship situation. I would hope the NCAA will come up with a better solution, but skepticism toward their process is usually the safest approach, until the actual decision is made.

And the next domino falls: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2020/07/21/nfl-cancel-2020-preseason-agrees-reduced-training-camp-rosters/5483773002/ If NFL actually plays, it will be interesting to see games with no preseason warmup. However, this is probably just moving things closer to cancellation by small steps. If NFL cancels, I don't see how colleges can justify playing.

For the community college I do some part time teaching for we had the choice of going to "remote" learning vs "online" learning when we made the conversion in mid-March. The difference being that remote learning is like the distance learning of old - when it was via VTC (which UNL was a pioneer in back in the 80s) - meaning you had class at a certain time, just not in person. The VTC model was more like students at a remote site going to a classroom with VTC and seeing a lecture taking place elsewhere, but with Zoom/Skype/etc. this morphed into sitting at home. So for a remote class, the expectation was that learning would be in real time. I chose a sort of combination approach - I was available to all my students during the normal class times and did lectures that way. However, I also made all the lecture notes available to any students that could no longer make that class time and recorded my lectures as well for them to download. I did this due to what you said about schedules changing due to the impact of coronavirus - they might be stuck working where they didn't have to before, they might not have good enough high speed internet at home, they might have to share computing resources with others and not be able to meet at that time, etc. So attendance was voluntary, but it gave those that could make it a chance to have direct interaction with me as I went through the material, while still allowing those that couldn't a chance to still send emails, etc. with questions after they looked at the material. I also set up some online office hours and tried to be flexible so that students could drop in and ask questions. It was very tiring. I mainly did this since the students did not sign up for a remote learning environment when the semester started, so I felt I had to be as flexible as possible to help them out. For the fall, my campus is still closed (except for some rare exceptions - Biology and Chemistry Labs, some Nursing courses, etc.). So I will teach in a remote paradigm for the fall, where we meet to conduct the class during the scheduled class time. Since the class is listed that way in the course catalog, the expectation is that they understand what they are signing up for. I think if you set it up that way it is no different than them taking a class on campus at a certain time. Yeah, they can have computer problems, but they shouldn't be any higher than the obligatory "my car broke down/was in an accident/got called in for an extra shift at work/etc." that I've heard from students in previous years for standard face to face courses. But, for K-12, this is a much more difficult scenario. So I don't see impact on football players any more than with their normal course load - they have been obligated to meet at a certain place and time before, now just a certain time via virtual means. Agree though that hybrid type meetings will greatly increase infection probabilities. Further reading about what happened with the Marlins seems to indicate they probably got community spread due to high counts in Miami. The same thing would probably happen to players going to class. The result is probably not appetizing to most of the players - living in a bubble for the fall semester - no going to class, no hanging out with friends (except for teammates), no partying, etc. As a much older person, I don't see it as a big sacrifice (I don't have much of a social life anyway ) but I assume 18-23 year olds might have a different opinion. As you and many others have said - that will probably kill the season.

All these opinions may be finally approaching the million monkeys on a million typewriters scenario. Only the result won't be Shakespeare.

Opinion columns already starting to appear regarding these cancellations: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2020/07/27/mlb-season-suddenly-jeopardy-after-covid-outbreak-miami-marlins/5517567002/ The last part of that is probably the most significant issue - did the Marlins players catch the virus from team/game activities or from off site actions? If several Phillies test positive this does not bode well for the college football season. On the other hand, if no Phillies come back positive, maybe baseball can recover ok and move forward. Social distancing is almost a natural part of baseball - except when in the dugout. I would guess outside of the dugout the highest probably for transmission would be when a player is at bat. In which case I would think we'd see umpires and catchers start to get infected disproportionately. Since we only have a few days worth of data, we don't know enough yet. However, since football cannot obviously meet social distancing, I'm not sure of the impact. If no Phillies test positive, maybe a glimmer of hope stays alive. If several Phillies do test positive, that may be the final curtain coming down on a viable college football season.

I remember how immature my friends and I were when we were in Junior High. Looking back, I think people that teach, in particular grades 6ish through 9ish, have to have incredible patience, a relatable demeanor, and the ability to get the kids to trust them as well as know the material. Like you said, I would hope most 6th grade math teachers understand math well at that level - that is not the hard part. Not to take cheap potshots, but just being young and eager as a teacher doesn't automatically mean those other important traits are present. Some people seem to have them innately, others learn them over time. I do some part time community college level instruction (physics) and I am thankful that for the most part class control is not a significant issue at that age. I would never have the patience to teach K-12.

I think all of the arguments about America being different than Europe and thus not a fair comparison are trying to deflect from the failure of the current administration. This article offers a perspective I had not yet seen on why certain countries are failing so badly at handling coronavirus: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/struggle-pandemic-populist-leaders-fare-poorly-71936667?cid=clicksource_4380645_6_film_strip_icymi_hed I'm sure the same commenters citing "American uniqueness" will dismiss this as a viable reason, but there does seem to be evidence that populism is a failure at fighting pandemics. To me, populism reinforces the persecution syndrome that we seem to have with segments of our population and leads to people actively resisting simple steps (masking, social distancing, hand washing, etc.) that have shown great promise at reducing the spread. A big reason why Europe will probably have sports going on in the fall with attendance, while the US is still worrying about outbreaks among isolated players.

I think for many, no matter what tool it is, the only response is "it's a hammer". So, people don't properly use the tool, get injured, and then complain that we need new tools.

One thing that could influence it is mutations. There isn't a lot of evidence out yet on differences in transmission between the different mutation, but per this paper published in Nature, the show that the South Korea strain is not the same as the US strain. This paper is focused on Fatality rates, but hopefully a similar paper is in works to show the transmission rates. I think the South Korea strain is pretty close to the original Wuhan outbreak. Not sure if this means that we could experienced greater transmission among children, but it is just something else to consider. https://www.nature.com/articles/s10038-020-0808-9

This might offer some insight into how crowds would be impacted in stadiums (not on player-player type interactions) to help decide how reasonable it is to have fans in the stands. https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory/indy-500-reduce-capacity-25-percent-lift-blackout-71919976?cid=clicksource_4380645_7_heads_posts_headlines_hed

Assuming the college football season does proceed, with teams traveling to other sites to play. In light of this: https://www.1011now.com/2020/07/22/nebraska-now-on-ny-ct-nj-quarantine-list-as-covid-spikes/ , does that mean Nebraska would have to forfeit, or travel two weeks early for the game @ Rutgers? With a patchwork of 50 states doing 50 different things, this is probably another nail in the (already lowering into the ground) coffin for a season. Granted things will probably change by the time of the currently scheduled game date (Oct 24), but this is an added hurdle to overcome. If you have two road games one week apart to states that both require visitors from Nebraska to quarantine for 14 days, you probably have to forfeit one of the games. How will New Jersey treat Rutgers' players that leave to play a road game in a state where NJ requires those coming from that state to quarantine? Would all the players have to isolate without interacting with any people that stayed behind in NJ? I could see other states implementing this type of scenario as the fall progresses as well.

Agree - since the Ivy League is where we plant most of our "lawyer seed" in this country, they were really out in front on this. I'm sure the lawyers played a big part in the Ivy League's quick cancellation of their basketball tourney which eventually led to the cancellation of the NCAA tournament.