(05-12-2020 04:53 PM)Jerry Weaver Wrote: I have been opining to a great degree about whether or not EMU should play football. Dennis, I think we all would appreciate your perspective on this situation. I truly don't have a dog in this fight while you clearly do, if you disagree with my thoughts, please do not hesitate to let me know. Watcha thinkin?
I am torn. As a football fan and knowing how much football means to Alex and his teammates, I would love to see them play in the Fall, and play as much a full schedule as would be possible. Alex is on track to get some meaningful playtime this year. He had commented to me that he expected to see a lot of subbing in and out during games on the O-line this year. That makes sense...with the talent they have across the line this year, taking advantage of it to keep your line fresh through the fourth quarter would be huge. So anticipating a strong O-line performance for the coming season and expecting that Alex could be on the field a lot, I would hate to see the football season scaled back, or worse, canceled.
As a dad who has the best interest for his kids at heart, I am concerned about the prospect of Alex participating in a contact sport this Fall. Sweat, spit, blood, breathing in each other's faces, sharing water bottles, grabbing any old towel to wipe sweat off your face, grabbing another player's sweaty jersey, rolling on the field in a spot where another player recently spit out a mouthful of water...and I could go on and on...all add up to an incredible number of possible exposure points. And that's just in a game...one day a week. Add in daily practices and workouts, I don't see a realistic way to prevent these kids from being exposed.
You might be able to take over a dorm and make it athletes-only with tight restrictions on social distancing, controls in the cafeteria on what they eat, how it's prepared, served, and cleaned up after to minimize their day-to-day exposure to strangers. But if classes actually meet, boom...exposure opportunity. And if you are able to control what your players do during the week, you don't know what the guys across the line from you on Saturday did during the week. Again, possible exposure point. As a dad, this kind of thinking quickly becomes overwhelming.
I do hope they play. I hope they find ways to keep the players safe and minimize exposure. I hope they come up with a testing regimen that will quickly identify those with COVID. These are young guys in great physical condition. If they catch it, the odds are in their favor they will recover. But if one player catches it, as close as these guys are on a day-to-day basis, do you quarantine a whole team for 15 days? In-season, that's potentially two forfeited games.
Another concern I haven't seen mentioned (it may have been and I've missed it) is referee crews. Those guys and gals tend to be older, and very much part of the vulnerable population. How many 50+-year-old referees are going to want to wade into the environment I described above every week? How do we keep them safe?
Of course, this is all assuming they don't have a cure or vaccine by the Fall. By all accounts, that is unlikely, and just about any expert I've heard has said to expect this thing to start showing a comeback in the Fall if it does indeed subside in the warmth and humidity of the summer.
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2020 Football Season in question
We heard that in Nazi Germany in the 1930s! 