MAC has a chance to be a leader here and be first FBS to cancel football. With their best revenue sources taken away, and the trajectory the virus is on, not playing is a no-brainer. The expense and waste of constant testing and monitoring just to play in front of nobody (or worse, on ESPN3) is not worth it. Not trying to be a doomer, and it will crush me on some level, but better to lead than follow on this. The writing is on the wall.

(07-12-2020 08:40 AM)MacLord Wrote:  MAC has a chance to be a leader here and be first FBS to cancel football.

Much as we were when the MAC decided to try to play the MAC tournament without fans.

Rather than cancel, I would expect the season to be postponed until spring, leaving us in the same purgatory faced by fans of all the pro leagues right now.

(07-12-2020 08:40 AM)MacLord Wrote:  MAC has a chance to be a leader here and be first FBS to cancel football. With their best revenue sources taken away, and the trajectory the virus is on, not playing is a no-brainer. The expense and waste of constant testing and monitoring just to play in front of nobody (or worse, on ESPN3) is not worth it.

With Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas and Arizona running out of control and California teetering on the brink, the SEC, ACC, PAC-12, Big12, CUSA and SBC seasons seem pretty doomed, and the MWC is teetering.

If the Big Ten only play each other, they have six-seven games a week, so maybe three on Fox, three on ESPN, one on BTN. But some of those will be on network TV.

So it might actually be a chance to have multiple games on ESPN2 or the ESPN Mothership and still more on ESPNU.

Start the second the last weekend of September, play a divisional round robin then have the two winners play in the CCG. Six weeks and done.

Michigan has the 13th most covid cases and Ohio has the 15th most. Sure, both are doing fairly well relative to their size compared to other states, but it's still very much a problem here. If any conferences/states say screw it we're going to play football anyways, it will likely be the SEC. States like Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi have taken a pretend it doesn't exist approach to dealing with covid, which is why those states are among the highest per capita. Why would they change their approach now?

(07-16-2020 08:23 AM)kreed5120 Wrote:  Michigan has the 13th most covid cases and Ohio has the 15th most.

Total cases, or new cases per day per hundred thousand people?

Quote: Sure, both are doing fairly well relative to their size compared to other states, but it's still very much a problem here. If any conferences/states say screw it we're going to play football anyways, it will likely be the SEC. States like Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi have taken a pretend it doesn't exist approach to dealing with covid, which is why those states are among the highest per capita. Why would they change their approach now?

Because as the death toll builds, there's a tipping point where for enough people it's not abstract statistics but a cousin, a nephew, an aunt, a grandparent etc. The inexorable fact about the epidemic is that playing "three monkeys" politics leads to rapid expansion of the number of infections at the same time, which with a lag leads to rapid expansion of the number of hospitalizations which with a lag leads to a rapid expansion of the death toll.

And as ICU's get overwhelmed, the mortality rate per case starts to rise because hospitals have to triage. First they are denying care to 80 and 90 year olds, and everyone is "well, we knew it was very dangerous for very old people", then they are denying care to 60 and 70 year olds, then they are denying care to 50 year olds, and as the triage bite into the core of the high voting rate population, the Pollyanna talking points about how it's not necessary to do something loses weight and poll driven pollies see they HAVE to do something.

And Universities see the threat of civil lawsuits for putting various groups at risk from opening up ... and shut down.

Because some are exercising common sense, the doubling rate is not as explosive as it was in March and April, but still, if today's case rate is twice what it was two weeks ago, then in two weeks the new death rate will be twice what it is today. If 80 deaths per day doesn't swing Florida pollies, then it will climb to 160, then 320, then 640, then 1,280 ... until it does.

(07-16-2020 10:59 PM)BruceMcF Wrote:  

(07-16-2020 08:23 AM)kreed5120 Wrote:  Michigan has the 13th most covid cases and Ohio has the 15th most.

Total cases, or new cases per day per hundred thousand people?

Quote: Sure, both are doing fairly well relative to their size compared to other states, but it's still very much a problem here. If any conferences/states say screw it we're going to play football anyways, it will likely be the SEC. States like Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi have taken a pretend it doesn't exist approach to dealing with covid, which is why those states are among the highest per capita. Why would they change their approach now?

Because as the death toll builds, there's a tipping point where for enough people it's not abstract statistics but a cousin, a nephew, an aunt, a grandparent etc. The inexorable fact about the epidemic is that playing "three monkeys" politics leads to rapid expansion of the number of infections at the same time, which with a lag leads to rapid expansion of the number of hospitalizations which with a lag leads to a rapid expansion of the death toll.

And as ICU's get overwhelmed, the mortality rate per case starts to rise because hospitals have to triage. First they are denying care to 80 and 90 year olds, and everyone is "well, we knew it was very dangerous for very old people", then they are denying care to 60 and 70 year olds, then they are denying care to 50 year olds, and as the triage bite into the core of the high voting rate population, the Pollyanna talking points about how it's not necessary to do something loses weight and poll driven pollies see they HAVE to do something.

And Universities see the threat of civil lawsuits for putting various groups at risk from opening up ... and shut down.

Because some are exercising common sense, the doubling rate is not as explosive as it was in March and April, but still, if today's case rate is twice what it was two weeks ago, then in two weeks the new death rate will be twice what it is today. If 80 deaths per day doesn't swing Florida pollies, then it will climb to 160, then 320, then 640, then 1,280 ... until it does.

I was referring to total cases to date for Michigan and Ohio. Ohio has had 1k+ new cases per day for the past 8 days, which is 3x the numbers we were putting up last month and back to the numbers we were having in April. Michigan, which was beat up much more heavily earlier on, has seemed to have it much more contained than Ohio now by having 250-500 cases per day now.

(07-17-2020 08:43 AM)kreed5120 Wrote:  I was referring to total cases to date for Michigan and Ohio. Ohio has had 1k+ new cases per day for the past 8 days, which is 3x the numbers we were putting up last month and back to the numbers we were having in April. Michigan, which was beat up much more heavily earlier on, has seemed to have it much more contained than Ohio now by having 250-500 cases per day now.

I was comparing them to the hot spots. For cases:

Alabama is 1,702/day, rising
Georgia is 3,509/day, rising
Florida is 11,865/day, rising
... all well past their previous peaks.

Indiana is 644/day, rising
Michigan is 682/day, rising
Ohio is 1,324, rising
... Ohio is above its previous peak, Indiana is more than halfway there, Michigan is well under half its previous peak.

Cases that are finished, one way or the other ... they don't occupy hospital beds. They are not part of the current problem.

In Alabama, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, if we could prevent the no-maskers from sabotaging the economy at a time when over a million a week are filing for unemployment, sometime between mid-August and mid-September, things could be got under control.

Georgia and Florida are well past that. They are heading into Wuhan territory.

The MAC should look for teams from other G5 conferences to fill the void. Cincinnati was scheduled to play at Nebraska. Maybe schedule a home and home with cincy to fill the void this year, and pay it back sometime down the road.

NIU now has a third non-conference game cancelled vs Rhode Island. BYU is our only non-conference game remaining. At this point we'll be down to a MAC-only schedule.

(07-19-2020 08:17 AM)epasnoopy Wrote:  NIU now has a third non-conference game cancelled vs Rhode Island. BYU is our only non-conference game remaining. At this point we'll be down to a MAC-only schedule.

ND is losing a bunch of games. Grab them.

Add some ND and and Army games MAC. (Although I think ND is going to be added to ACC more since they lost some PAC12 games.)