Will There Be a 2020 Football Season?

[Husker03]

So then, football in 6 weeks, yes?

[knapplc]

4 minutes ago, Husker03 said:

So then, football in 6 weeks, yes?

 

Almost certainly not.

 

 

Unrolled here.

 

 

 

[nic]

14 minutes ago, Rochelobe said:

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/

Ahhhhhh no more opinions....please, for the love of all things holy.....

[Rochelobe]

33 minutes ago, nic said:

Ahhhhhh no more opinions....please, for the love of all things holy.....

All these opinions may be finally approaching the million monkeys on a million typewriters scenario.

 

Only the result won't be Shakespeare.

[Huskers93-97]

Essentially any titles won this year in any sports would have an asterisk next to them. So why not look at this season as a way to try to play as many games as you can, make as much money as you can, entertain as many as you can. If delays or cancellations like this Marlins thing occurs then so be it. Wait a week or 2 weeks then play your next scheduled game and hopefully it happens. As long as you have a safe game environment let the game commence. Why does it have to be all in or all out. Just play as many games as you can. I am sure financially for these clubs and cities that would be better than saying no games.

 

I know for me. If the Huskers have 10 scheduled games- but outbreaks occur and we only play 7 I would be fine with that. Take what we can get this year.

[knapplc]

1 minute ago, Huskers93-97 said:

Essentially any titles won this year in any sports would have an asterisk next to them. So why not look at this season as a way to try to play as many games as you can, make as much money as you can, entertain as many as you can. If delays or cancellations like this Marlins thing occurs then so be it. Wait a week or 2 weeks then play your next scheduled game and hopefully it happens. As long as you have a safe game environment let the game commence. Why does it have to be all in or all out. Just play as many games as you can. I am sure financially for these clubs and cities that would be better than saying no games.

 

I know for me. If the Huskers have 10 scheduled games- but outbreaks occur and we only play 7 I would be fine with that. Take what we can get this year.

 

I think this is something we can all agree on. 

[Ulty]

2 hours ago, Tom Brokejaw said:

Hello All!  GO BIG RED!

 

Just signed up looking for info.  Without having to read through 150+ pages of comments, what is the current hard news on football happening this Fall?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

If you are new to Huskerboard, this dumpster fire of a thread is the last place you want to wade into. You'll wanna start with literally any other thread. Welcome.

[kansas45]

17 minutes ago, Huskers93-97 said:

I know for me. If the Huskers have 10 scheduled games- but outbreaks occur and we only play 7 I would be fine with that. Take what we can get this year.

 

The minute they send students home and close the entire campus because of an outbreak on campus, it is all over.

 

The minute that one student-athlete gets sick and goes to the hospital, its all over.

 

The minute that there is a report that someone who got covid and then reports some long term health effect, its all over.

 

The media outrage machine will kick in. 

https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/max-kellerman-offers-a-fair-warning-to-the-nfl-news.115012.html

 

 

[bugeater17]

2 hours ago, kansas45 said:

 

Trust me, this is not as easy as it sounds. You have some students who work during the class period and will complain about that. Oh sure, you can make a class schedule and if it is face-to-face you are supposed to be there. However, when the pandemic hit, students went home and got jobs and that really messed up a schedule. Faculty had to switch around class times so that the students could meet. Like you expect the professor to be teaching 24/7? No way. When it says online, it means that the professor can establish the times that he/she demands OR they can be diplomatic and try to get a class time that fits for all the students (like herding cats in my opinion). Online classes are listed as Online and not given a class time schedule such as Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 11:00 to 11:50. Such blows the whole concept of online distance delivery based on the paradigm of "go to school at your pace and on your schedule." And if I am a professor and I have a set time to meet in the classroom I am not going to look to kindly to the person who gives the excuse of "I cannot make it, I have football practice; can I just do all my stuff online?" And there are professors who use the zoom attendance as part of the grade. Now, take all this information and couple it with the student-athlete that has a 15, or 16 or 17 or 18 hour schedule. Not all classes are created equal and not all of them are your typical 3 hour classes. Some classes could be a four hours with a separate lab component that is built into it that meets at another time. Here is an example: Biology 186 Principles of Biological Systems 1. This class meets MWF from 11:00 to 11:50; the lab portion is a one hour component to supplement the class; it meets on Tuesday from 1:30 to 3:15. 

 

Oh but the professor can meet with the student individually....sorry, that's called an independent study and no professor is going to do more than they have to. 

 

Oh but the professor can have a zoom and do a 50 minute class and simply meet for a 25 minutes to accommodate the football players....sorry, there are accreditation standards that strongly suggest that classes are to meet for the full time period and meet the prescribed "minutes"; 

 

Oh but the professor has academic freedom.....not until their Dean finds out what they are doing. No professor wants to have to explain themselves. 

 

Now, if the class is hybrid and let's say a class is to meet on Monday and Wednesday, but one half meets on Monday face to face and the other half meets on Wednesday you still have the aspect of being exposed to the general student population. If the class is completely online, you are going to have problems in scheduling a class time where all the students can meet for the Zoom at the same time. 

 

And you cannot simply have classes set aside for "just the football team" unless you have a cohort model but even this get's difficult at times as the student has a major and there are not multiple sections of an upper level course. 

 

Now, does this sound like this is "easier"? It is a logistical nightmare. 

 

Online/zoom classes can operate the exact same as in person. The class time has a set time just as normal in person class. You login for attendance and the teacher can call on students just as if in person. Programs also exist to take tests online, like examsoft, which lock the computer into that program for a set timeframe. However, most tests would need to be 'open book' under this scenario but there are ways to adjust. 

 

Obviously the biggest struggle would be uncooperative professors or professors who aren't tech savy.

 

Again, these pieces are just ideas that are being floated at Universities, not just for athletes but all students which I know are being discussed (I've overheard my wife, who works in higher education, on zoom conferences). 

[Mavric]

37 minutes ago, kansas45 said:

The minute they send students home and close the entire campus because of an outbreak on campus, it is all over.

 

Probably for that school.

 

37 minutes ago, kansas45 said:

The minute that one student-athlete gets sick and goes to the hospital, its all over.

 

False

 

37 minutes ago, kansas45 said:

The minute that there is a report that someone who got covid and then reports some long term health effect, its all over.

 

False

[Decoy73]

59 minutes ago, Huskers93-97 said:

 

I know for me. If the Huskers have 10 scheduled games- but outbreaks occur and we only play 7 I would be fine with that. Take what we can get this year.

At this point I’d be thrilled with 3-4.   Anything more would be a huge bonus.  Baseball didn’t even make it a week without the virus stepping in.  
 

If there’s only 1-3 Husker games played before it gets shutdown,  can you imagine the number of times and ways we all are going to replay over analyze every single play for the following  9 months?  

[kansas45]

10 minutes ago, bugeater17 said:

Online/zoom classes can operate the exact same as in person. The class time has a set time just as normal in person class. You login for attendance and the teacher can call on students just as if in person. Programs also exist to take tests online, like examsoft, which lock the computer into that program for a set timeframe. However, most tests would need to be 'open book' under this scenario but there are ways to adjust. 

 

Obviously the biggest struggle would be uncooperative professors or professors who aren't tech savy.

 

Again, these pieces are just ideas that are being floated at Universities, not just for athletes but all students which I know are being discussed (I've overheard my wife, who works in higher education, on zoom conferences). 

 

Theoretically, but not in real life. These "ideas" are constantly being tossed around but it is when you actually do it that you find out that there are severe gaps and omissions and problems. It's always easier to indicate to someone else's content area and specialty area of "this is what you can do" than to actually have to do it. 

 

Look, there is a program called Respondus that locks a computer; however, this program is not compatible with things like Chromebook or others; if the program is incompatible, then the idea of proctoring an exam in moot; and if you do want an exam proctored, the paperwork that needs to be done to find a person willing to proctor an exam is going to be a problem.

 

Online classes via Zoom do not operate the same as they do in person because it is based on a person's pedagogy as well as the content that is being presented. Yes, a professor's knowledge and skill in tech is important but it does not work the same as a regular classroom. I do not know why people think this is so easy or the same as a regular classroom when it is totally not the same. The biggest mistake that professors made in the pivot to online in March was the attempt to replicate the same experience in a face-to-face class on a zoom forum. 

 

And it is not uncooperative professors, it is the professors and their particular pedagogy and their content. Yes, there are those professors who are unable to adapt and will hitch a fit and demand that they go face-to-face as that is their style. The idea of uncooperative professors is their willingness to convert their class to an online mode to satisfy the whims of the athletic department. 

 

And look at the tuition you are paying for "the online experience". This is where higher education administrators are freaking out about now. How can they justify their high tuition with this "online experience"? Academia is worried about their bottom line overall and not just worried about "football" and athletics. And this argument is going to come up really soon in that there will be faculty cuts and staff cuts and furloughs and "non-renewal of contracts" due to low enrollment ro not meeting enrollment numbers; THEN the faculty unions will hitch a fit over the university's decision to play football while faculty are getting axed and this will not be good optics either as these administrators wrestle with their mission as an academic enterprise vs that of being a place that has a minor league franchise. There will be discussion of some colleges filing exigency status. This is going to be a real mess.

[kansas45]

17 minutes ago, Mavric said:

57 minutes ago, kansas45 said:

The minute they send students home and close the entire campus because of an outbreak on campus, it is all over.

 

Probably for that school.

 

Quote

The minute that one student-athlete gets sick and goes to the hospital, its all over.

 

False

 

Quote

The minute that there is a report that someone who got covid and then reports some long term health effect, its all over.

 

False

 

Let's break this down:

1. You say "for that school". Why do you say that?

2. You say "false" on the aspect of one student-athlete being hospitalized for a covid-related problem. Why do you say that?

3. You say "false" on if someone gets a long term illness from covid. Why is that?

[Rochelobe]

3 hours ago, kansas45 said:

 

Trust me, this is not as easy as it sounds. You have some students who work during the class period and will complain about that. Oh sure, you can make a class schedule and if it is face-to-face you are supposed to be there. However, when the pandemic hit, students went home and got jobs and that really messed up a schedule. Faculty had to switch around class times so that the students could meet. Like you expect the professor to be teaching 24/7? No way. When it says online, it means that the professor can establish the times that he/she demands OR they can be diplomatic and try to get a class time that fits for all the students (like herding cats in my opinion). Online classes are listed as Online and not given a class time schedule such as Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 11:00 to 11:50. Such blows the whole concept of online distance delivery based on the paradigm of "go to school at your pace and on your schedule." And if I am a professor and I have a set time to meet in the classroom I am not going to look to kindly to the person who gives the excuse of "I cannot make it, I have football practice; can I just do all my stuff online?" And there are professors who use the zoom attendance as part of the grade. Now, take all this information and couple it with the student-athlete that has a 15, or 16 or 17 or 18 hour schedule. Not all classes are created equal and not all of them are your typical 3 hour classes. Some classes could be a four hours with a separate lab component that is built into it that meets at another time. Here is an example: Biology 186 Principles of Biological Systems 1. This class meets MWF from 11:00 to 11:50; the lab portion is a one hour component to supplement the class; it meets on Tuesday from 1:30 to 3:15. 

 

Oh but the professor can meet with the student individually....sorry, that's called an independent study and no professor is going to do more than they have to. 

 

Oh but the professor can have a zoom and do a 50 minute class and simply meet for a 25 minutes to accommodate the football players....sorry, there are accreditation standards that strongly suggest that classes are to meet for the full time period and meet the prescribed "minutes"; 

 

Oh but the professor has academic freedom.....not until their Dean finds out what they are doing. No professor wants to have to explain themselves. 

 

Now, if the class is hybrid and let's say a class is to meet on Monday and Wednesday, but one half meets on Monday face to face and the other half meets on Wednesday you still have the aspect of being exposed to the general student population. If the class is completely online, you are going to have problems in scheduling a class time where all the students can meet for the Zoom at the same time. 

 

And you cannot simply have classes set aside for "just the football team" unless you have a cohort model but even this get's difficult at times as the student has a major and there are not multiple sections of an upper level course. 

 

Now, does this sound like this is "easier"? It is a logistical nightmare. 

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.

[TGHusker]

I teach part time at a local univ - adult and graduate students -  Right now, my Sept even class is scheduled to be 'in the class room'.

Small group of students.  In the spring, my class switched from in the class room to on line.  If Okla numbers still are going up, I may request the Sept class to be on line as well.