ESPN: Power 5 execs holding emergency meeting to consider fall sports

[Hawkfnntn]

I will reiterate it again. College football, by itself, poses virtually no risk to participants from The Germ. The problem will be if there is a daisy chain outbreak that someone can trace to a particular game or program. A ball player's 68 year old grandma who catches The Germ ain't a party to any sort of contractual or quasi-contractual relationship between the ball player and the school providing for exculpation. The materiality of a potential judgment (or handful of judgments) stemming from a fact pattern where the schools operate with little regard for the external consequences of the football program spreading The Germ is massive and substantially overshadows the revenue side.

The coaches and the ADs are not the stewards of the overall balance sheet of the university, the presidents are. The balance sheet of the University of Iowa is 1000x more important than any single football season. The fact that there is trepidation about holding the season is prima facie evidence that it is probably a bad fucking idea and if I was a forward thinking university president, I would be scared shitless of the deposition in 18 months in the lawsuit where I have to defend my decision to go ahead with the season. That will create what is called in the legal industry some "asshole puckering moments."

That's obviously what they are the most worried about. Since nobody is even considering packing the stadiums full of fans it's all about the players/coaches and employees that make it all go possibly catching it. I don't get it though. Like all the meat packing plants Smithfields, Tysons, etc that all had to shut down for awhile with a ton of cases we never hear about them anymore. Did their employees that got sick get to go sue their employers at all? I would think it's as simple as each individual takes upon attending work, school, sports whatever upon themselves. Minors are obviously a different story needing parental consent but as adults it is what it is. So if liability is the only/main issue I would hope that's not going to end up holding things back at the end of the day. If it's about actually not transmitting it due to health reasons then at least that's legit.

 

[okeefe4prez]

That's obviously what they are the most worried about. Since nobody is even considering packing the stadiums full of fans it's all about the players/coaches and employees that make it all go possibly catching it. I don't get it though. Like all the meat packing plants Smithfields, Tysons, etc that all had to shut down for awhile with a ton of cases we never hear about them anymore. Did their employees that got sick get to go sue their employers at all? I would think it's as simple as each individual takes upon attending work, school, sports whatever upon themselves. Minors are obviously a different story needing parental consent but as adults it is what it is. So if liability is the only/main issue I would hope that's not going to end up holding things back at the end of the day. If it's about actually not transmitting it due to health reasons then at least that's legit.

An employer has a massive liability shield due to work comp laws that cap recovery and set up an alternative dispute resolution system and jurisdiction in a lot of those cases if they were filed would reside in places that are fairly business friendly. I think the Feds also invoked the defense production act, which is an even further liability shield because the packers basically had to stay open.

 

[okeefe4prez]

International football (soccer) was one of the first major sports to return to play. They did it by quarantining 22 players per side plus coaches, medical staff, officials, limited news media and broadcast crews for like 10 days; testing almost daily; then playing in empty stadiums. You're talking probably 100 people being placed in a virtual bubble per match. Even with those restrictions you had a few players test positive for The Germ who then could not compete.

This is a limited number of professional players and workers largely kept under wraps to keep them from getting exposed or infected between and during competitions.

It would be very difficult -- and expensive -- to try to duplicate that on the broader scale of American CFB. One hundred players (or more) per side, more coaches, more staff, more reporters, larger broadcast operations. How are you going to quarantine upwards of 350 people or more for 10 days prior to games? Americans are accustomed to the freedom of moving around, going out to eat, socialize, etc., bince that's who they are, how they were raised. The cost of daily testing alone would be prohibitive. And for what -- a televised broadcast with piped-in crowd noise that is going to generate a mere fraction of revenue than would have been the case five months ago?

Any sports organization is probably going to need a bubble to run effectively. The Euros have them and they are doing them for baseball in Korea and Japan. The thought that you could run an organization the size of CFB without a bubble is a pipedream.