Coronavirus and Sport

[Sporting]

I don't think La Liga has had any positives since the restart.

[anton pulisov]

Certainly not for Barca anyway

[Sporting]

Well, Messi has improved his penalty taking.

[Incandenza]

It's depressing how much that American universities' plans for the start of school in Fall is tied to what happens with the college football season. But if football is called off and in-person classes are cancelled, I'll take it.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...id/5352371002/

As the calendar turns to July, a month that is slated to bring the opening of college football preseason camps, social media feeds of coaches and administrators across the country have been filled with messages imploring fans to wear masks if they want the season to begin on time.

But the campaign to mask up is more than just a public service announcement. Instead, it’s a warning whose seriousness has started to dawn on weary athletic directors: If the current trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic does not change in the next two weeks, playing the college football season as scheduled is in significant peril.

In conversations with more than a dozen administrators, coaches and others intimately involved with college sports, all of whom spoke with USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity in order to provide their honest assessment, the level of uncertainty and alarm around the current situation has only grown in recent days.

Pervasive optimism that the college football season would start and finish on time has given way to nervousness as programs continue to see players with COVID-19 infections during voluntary workouts and multiple states have either slowed down or reversed some aspects of their reopening plans due to spiking case numbers. The idea of delaying college football to the spring, which was dismissed as a last resort a few months ago, is being revived in some corners as a legitimate option to buy time and give programs more tools to manage a situation that many administrators privately admit is unwieldy and uncertain. Meanwhile, some FBS conferences are actively engaged with banks on opening up lines of credit to guard against lost revenue, a key acknowledgment that schools fear a potential revenue wipeout this fall.
...
As one athletic director in the Midwest pointed out, it wasn’t until states within the SEC footprint started to open up in May that there was a strong push nationally to bring football players back to campus in June. It’s unclear what that will now mean in the near and medium-term future with the virus surging in SEC states like Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, but the delusion of a relatively smooth transition back to sports has now been obliterated.

Even if the numbers in those states were stable, the reality of how difficult it’s going to be for programs to avoid constant disruptions has been laid bare by what happened at LSU, where at least 30 players have had to isolate due to either testing positive for COVID-19 or coming into contact with someone who tested positive at the local bars. A total of 37 Clemson players have tested positive. At Kansas State, workouts were shut down because of positive tests for players who are believed to have been infected at a party.

Administrators have seen those numbers and are already worried about whether their schools have planned for enough quarantine space once campuses are fully opened to regular students. They also realize that despite significant measures to sanitize and socially distance when players are in the athletic facilities, you can only do so much to monitor and control who athletes are coming into contact with most of the day. You can ask players to reduce their social lives and stay inside as much as possible, but everyone knows it’s simply not realistic in a college setting.

[Hot Pepsi]

It's not just that. The economy of many towns depends on the students coming back as well as football. And the places themselves have dorms and what not that need customers.

The future of many institutions depends on that too, because if what they're offering is just a bunch of glorified TED talks, more and more families are going to decide it isn't worth it and enrollment at many places will continue to slide. The big state schools and the most prestigious, well-endowed places will be fine in the long run, but so many of the smaller, not-so-rich schools - many of which are an important stepping stone for less-privileged people, will disappear and the people who would have gone there will be left to fend for themselves in a sea of for-profit grifter outfits or online only operations that don't provide much support.

That might be inevitable anyway.

There are some, especially on the right, who think this would be great. But it won't be. It will be just another thing separating the haves from the have-nots, because degrees from brick and mortar universities will still have more clout than online degrees, because there are still a lot of aspects of the experience that cannot be reproduced remotely. And not just the fun parts. Working in a lab or "field," learning how to have an informed discussion, making connections, etc.

[ursus arctos]

ms ursus got her MFA from just such a "smaller, not so rich" school, and the situation there is an absolute disaster that definitely threatens its continued existence (the MFA programme has already been axed).

[Satchmo Distel]

I'm seriously worried about FGCU and Fort Myers, given that FGCU's slogan is "Go Eagles!" and the marketing wraps its whole identity around that, e.g:

https://www2.fgcu.edu/crm/fgcu18.html

[Hot Pepsi]

I'm seriously worried about FGCU and Fort Myers, given that FGCU's slogan is "Go Eagles!" and the marketing wraps its whole identity around that, e.g:

https://www2.fgcu.edu/crm/fgcu18.html

Yeah, I recall that making the NCAA tournament was a huge deal for the whole school because it made so many people aware of its existence.

They might want to come up with a new ad campaign.

[ursus arctos]

The degree to which all kinds of schools have been able to convince prospective students (particularly affluent out of state kids able to pay close to full freight) that "big time athletics" is an essential part of the "college experience" is amazing to someone of my vintage.

But it works, as has been helped massively by the blanket television coverage provide by the likes of ESPN

Schools like FGCU are just following the path trail blazed by the likes of Duke, UNC and Miami decades ago.

[Hot Pepsi]

I don’t know how many students think it’s essential part. Some clearly do, but more and more clearly don’t. Student attendance at football has been declining in recent years and I know that some schools that have traditionally had no trouble getting students to come to hockey games are having to work at it much harder now. I assume it’s the same with basketball.

It might just be regression to the mean or maybe the appeal of staying home and watching on TV, video games, Netflix, are keeping more students away. I don’t think they’re studying harder.

It’s harder for big city schools to get students to come to games than for schools in towns like this one. There are more entertainment options in cities, but also the sort of students who *chose* to go to a school in a big city - or a smaller schools or both - are just less likely to be interested in the sports stuff. They want to wear black and go to museums and look down their noses at people who go to football games. I’m stereotyping, but only a bit.

The sports are a way to connect the “community” to the institution and administrators seem very concerned about that. Too much so, I fear.

William & Mary keeps pushing that angle. My feeling is that they could get more bang for their PR buck promoting the cheaper and less popular sports that have a better chance of actual on-field success - baseball and soccer - rather than trying to make basketball (or football) happen. I think they could also try spending more of that money on arts and culture stuff that the public would be interested in. But I’m not a hedge fund guy giving them a zillion dollars to upgrade the gym. I picked the wrong major.

I think there will be a reckoning soon. The number of schools that can financially afford to have massive successful sports is naturally limited - it’s a zero sum game - and even those places need to find a way to control the arms race. Most of these other schools trying to be the next Boise State in football or Gonzaga in basketball are going to find they just can’t afford it and/or it’s not getting them where they want to go. And of course, if players can get more collective power and/or the TV money spigot shuts off for some reason, the whole system will have to radically change.


* Although, I’ve known a number of kids who never showed any interest in sports suddenly get swept up into the frenzy when they go to Penn State. It’s as much about the social experience as watching sports, of course.

[ursus arctos]

I'm not sure that kids actually have to go to games.

The phenomenon I was referencing is more about getting the school onto a kid's radar (and that of his/her parents). Given the way our society functions, sports are much more effective at that than innovative history programmes or great physics labs.

[Hot Pepsi]

Many students don’t go to the games, or they do, but don’t really follow it closely.


UCF is famous for having one of those “halftime ads” that does not show students doing anything academic. No token shots of scientists with beakers or students practicing violin - standard for the genre. Just shots of the beautiful nature preserve in the middle of campus, football, and some multicultural groups of students smiling.


I’m afraid the reality is that most US 18 year olds have no idea what they want to do with their life and no clear idea what they want out of education,* so they’re attracted to what they think they already understand. They generally don’t know how to evaluate the quality of the lab facilities or the curriculum even if they’re interested. So many of the kids who can’t get into the “good schools” - and even many who can - have decided, or perhaps conceded, that the best they can aspire to in college is to have a good time, major in business, and then somehow get a “good“ job with a minimum of effort. And most colleges and universities lack the collective imagination or resources to offer them anything else.

For schools whose teams are on TV and/or make the NCAA tournament often, it’s a good way to get name and brand recognition. A bit like how on that other thread you were saying banks in NYC have branches in good locations just to get their signage out there. But for so many institutions, it’s becoming a money pit.


It would be better if college/university generally started later, I think.

[Satchmo Distel]

In my experience, students can get permission to skip classes if they are travelling to support a team. Carrot rather than stick.

[Hot Pepsi]

I’ve not heard of such a thing.

[Ray de Galles]

https://twitter.com/ollie_bayliss/status/1281265916718788613?s=21

[Ray de Galles]

https://twitter.com/ollie_bayliss/status/1329400882904109057?s=21

[Third rate Leszno]

Pleased to see ice hockey on the list but fuck all for speedway and stock car racing whose promoters also have venues to maintain.

[Ray de Galles]

My sentiments exactly, disgusting to see greyhound racing in there too.

[Hot Pepsi]

When will Britain ban dog racing? Even Florida - F L O R I D A - banned it.

[Satchmo Distel]

Isn't horseracing just the cruelty of dog racing inflicted on larger animals?

[Paul S]

I enjoy going to greyhound racing and go a number of times a year and really enjoy it. I'm glad to see they have been included in the rescue package as some trainers have 100+ dogs and have had no racing and hence no income to keep them going. The situation has eased considerably since July with the re-opening of betting shops and they are still doing BAGS racing for betting online. Belle Vue, Peterborough and Poole greyhound tracks have since closed with more possible on the cards. The banger racing scene is in tatters but it has resumed behind closed doors with Stansted Raceway staging events. On the down side the pavilion at Arena Essex has been demolished, but the good news is that the owners have been told by Highways England they can't build 2,500 new homes on the site as it will over-load the road junction so they are now at 250. The rumour now is that a speedway track will be retained in some form on the site.

[Ray de Galles]

Isn't horseracing just the cruelty of dog racing inflicted on larger animals?

It very well may be but sadly I'm used to the level of government support that gets, especially during this pandemic.

To see greyhound racing get funding is a real shock. Give the RSPCA the money and let them care for the dogs.

[Hot Pepsi]

Isn't horseracing just the cruelty of dog racing inflicted on larger animals?

I don’t think it’s quite as bad, but it’s not good. But for now, dogracing is easier to end, so the focus is on that.

Pretty much any endeavor in which animals are bought and sold is going to have a lot of abuse and misery.

[Sporting]

I agree about dog racing but, and I'm very much speaking for myself, while I continue to be a meat-eater I would feel somewhat hypocritical pushing the point too far.

[Hot Pepsi]

You can avoid that by not eating meat.