Will There Be a 2020 Football Season?
- Thread starter BIG ERN
- Start date
The original goal was to “flatten the curve” or so we were told. Somewhere we shifted to cancel everything until it is gone or a vaccine is found.
knapplc
Active member
"Flatten the curve" was to keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed, and came from the CDC.
"Cancel everything" is not coming from the CDC, it's coming from individual sources. Nobody is forcing D1 football to cancel from outside - that's an internal decision. Same for March Madness, same for any other sport.
Rochelobe
Banned
Yes, flatten the curve, as was done in other countries was the goal.
We failed.
European countries did not just reach a plateau and call it good. They made sure that the incremental increase in cases per day was very small - so on an overall plot of new cases per day, they actually curved down from where they were. In many US states, things were reopened when the new cases per day had plateaued. While that is an important step (you don't want a situation where the number of new cases each day is increasing over the previous day), simply holding steady only means you've started to cope with the problem. If your plateau is at 3000 new cases per day in a state, that doesn't really help hospitals that much, since we know the treatment timelines for Covid, once hospitalized, can take weeks. We need to flatten things by making the line that represents the total number of cases be as flat as possible - meaning very few cases are being added per day.
Following this methodology, European soccer leagues were able to finish their seasons (and are now playing the completion of EUFA Champions League) without any major outbreaks in positive tests among players/support personnel. I think there have been more positive tests among MLB players/personnel in the 2 weeks since restart than all of the major European soccer leagues combined.
US new cases per day rates were still high in many states when things started being reopened.
Also, a really low number where states don't have to worry about other states (which we have not had in place) would have really helped with trying to play football. How can we expect inter-state coordination on sporting teams when they struggle to coordinate on shutdowns?
In the end, a coordinated Federal plan (all states follow the same shutdown criteria, interstate travel is greatly limited - even intrastate travel is limited), coupled with better compliance by American citizens (wearing masks) applied for 6 weeks or so would likely have had us in a much better situation today. It would have sucked worse than the ~4-6 weeks of inconsistent partial shutdowns we went through, but based upon what we see in other countries, we most likely wouldn't be having 50,000 new cases per day 5 months out.
In the end, this is was a big factor that made playing football less likely.
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Correct but I’m asking why. I was under the impression we were closing everything down (and I realize it was not everything) not because the virus was so dangerous, but so we didn’t overwhelm hospitals. Ok we did that so now why are we making the decisions to keep schools closed and cancel sports. It’s simple, nobody wants the liability for this stuff so let’s just come out and say it.
knapplc
Active member
It's a little of Column A, a little of Column B.
You're right that nobody wants the responsibility of anyone else's death, or even their serious illness. That could be catastrophic for an organization. The reason they have that fear is, we didn't have the top down leadership on this nation's response to this virus and we have uncontrolled spread. Without a good handle on sources of the virus, nobody knows who has it or who's going to transmit it. In that scenario, why would a college want the liability of being responsible for these students?
That's what they're thinking. Frost is correct that canceling football/sports will be a disaster. The institutions just don't want to be the epicenter of that disaster. It's hard to blame them.
WyoHusker56
New member
This has been the reason I've though we wouldn't have college football. However, I also assumed we weren't going to have in person college this year either, but that is moving full speed ahead and that is purely financially driven as schools make a lot of money from room and board. So, the argument that you don't want the liability of students/players contracting and spreading the virus is pretty much dead if you have in person classes. The players will be tested, monitored and quarantined better than anyone else on campus so they are actually less likely to spread the virus. In my mind the presidents have two options if they want to be consistent no sports, no on campus students or on campus students and sports. You can't have one or the other and make a realistic argument for your reason.
Huskers93-97
New member
We could finally win a championship? Plus if the rest of the big 10 is shut down we could climb back past ohio state to get back in the top 5 all time wins again? haha. Nothing like backing your way inIf the Big Ten Conference cancels the season there should be a Nebraska college championship.
Round robin amongst UNL, UNK, Chadron State, Wayne State, Midland, Peru State, Concordia, Hastings and Doane.
Would be maybe not great results but would be enjoyable nonetheless!
knapplc
Active member
WyoHusker56
New member
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We’re not told we have to do those things because we live in a free society for better or worse. We will never be a society that says you can’t leave your house.
They keep moving the goalposts. Some do it for medical reasons, others for political reasons. Our school district is half time remote. They sited the infection rate in the county and said it needed to be below 4 to go back full time. It has been dropping for two weeks now and is down to 3. If I point out to the school board that based on the infection rate we can go full time, I am sure they will move the goalposts again. If it were me, I would suggest we start school as planned half time on campus, half remote, and if the infection rate stays below 4 after 3 to 4 weeks of half time, we open up fully. I have no scientific basis for this suggestion. I am just using their criteria against them to prove they pulled it out of their a$$. :cowbell:
Your making the exact mistake everyone else does when taking about this pandemic for the US.
Yes, as a country we HAVE flattened any curve their might have been. INDIVIDUAL States have had spikes but the US as a whole has never been in danger of the health system being over run. Even at its peak in individual states, they have all been stressed but fine.
stop looking at this from a national scale and begin looking at this from an individual county in each state standpoint.