Iowa Football Parents Asking for Transparency from Big Ten
- Thread starter RobHowe
- Start date
Northside Hawk
Well-Known Member
It was announced yesterday that Wisconsin high school fall sports are a go with girls golf and cross country having already started preseason practice and football, soccer and volleyball playing abbreviated seasons.
A tentative plan to start preseason football and volleyball workouts on September 7 was put in place three or four weeks ago. Yesterday's reaffirmation makes me feel better about their chances but it is still obviously a fluid situation. Districts still have the option to abort the fall season and move the rest of it to spring in the event of an outbreak if they have played fewer than 50% of their regular season games, but the big decision to come from the WIAA is that they have given the district's the authority to make the call. That benefits parts of the state where Covid is less severe.
We finally had our basketball banquet at the home of one of the players about ten days ago. When their season was shut down after sectional semifinals they were 25-0 and ranked #1 in their division. Both seniors were emotional when talking about what could been. Neither could finish their speech. (Fortunately both will be playing D-3 in college.)
Covid breakouts are still possible once school begins and fall sports could still get derailed. I have a sophomore playing football, basketball and running track. He went stir crazy when he couldn't run track last spring. He is already talking about playing AAU this winter if basketball gets banged. So are a lot of others.
A tentative plan to start preseason football and volleyball workouts on September 7 was put in place three or four weeks ago. Yesterday's reaffirmation makes me feel better about their chances but it is still obviously a fluid situation. Districts still have the option to abort the fall season and move the rest of it to spring in the event of an outbreak if they have played fewer than 50% of their regular season games, but the big decision to come from the WIAA is that they have given the district's the authority to make the call. That benefits parts of the state where Covid is less severe.
We finally had our basketball banquet at the home of one of the players about ten days ago. When their season was shut down after sectional semifinals they were 25-0 and ranked #1 in their division. Both seniors were emotional when talking about what could been. Neither could finish their speech. (Fortunately both will be playing D-3 in college.)
Covid breakouts are still possible once school begins and fall sports could still get derailed. I have a sophomore playing football, basketball and running track. He went stir crazy when he couldn't run track last spring. He is already talking about playing AAU this winter if basketball gets banged. So are a lot of others.
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trj
Well-Known Member
Play it out. The other 3 power conferences play and "pull it off". The question will become and it is legit....why couldn't the B1G do it? Kevin Warren's kid is playing, but the conference he is running isn't. You can see how that could potentially look, right?
NorthKCHawk
Well-Known Member
If anyone thinks that these presidents are going to do an about face, they are nuts. Sign all the petitions you want. You have 14 ivory towers to climb and conquer. Good luck......
If the Commissioner and University Presidents think Covid risk is too high to play football games, then why are they allowing tens of thousands of kids to move back into campus dormitories, fraternities, sororities, etc.? Football players, like any college kids, are not going to self-isolate in their room all semester. They are going to be out at house parties, bars, maybe working a part time job at a grocery store or restaurant. Their girlfriend(s) could expose them just as easily as playing football. In other words, they can contract Covid just as easily living the college kid lifestyle as they could catch it playing football.
So why not attempt to have a season, with type protocals in place to test, and if a team and/or campus has an out of control outbreak, then you postpone games or worst case shut it down.
So why not attempt to have a season, with type protocals in place to test, and if a team and/or campus has an out of control outbreak, then you postpone games or worst case shut it down.
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
I would have loved to have made the decision because I would have told the other schools that we have to make the "shit or get off the pot" decision before bringing the football teams back to camp earlier this summer. I said in May there was no way the Pac 10 would play and I handicapped the B1G at under 10%. The institutional dumbfuckery that took this long to make the call is bordering on the absurd. It was clear back in April when "2 weeks to flatten the curve" morphed into "if it saves just one life" that the politburos across most of the Pac 10 and B1G footprints were not going to have the appetite for football. No one should be surprised by this. Absolutely no one.
These parents pouting just need to get over it. If I'm in senior leadership at Michigan or MSU there is no effin' way I'm putting my ass on the line against the governor to push for a season. There is a hierarchy of leadership and the voice of the public schools is at best illusory and subservient to the broader government. Yeah, it sucks that there is no season, but there is a pandemic that has fucked up sports all over the world. Sports aren't essential. End of story. Hopefully it's a good lesson for the kids.
It sure is. Because nobody has a crystal ball. Everyone thinks they know what's gonna happen but nobody really knows. So the lose lose part of it is either way you're going to get heat for it in the here and now regardless of what you decide. I want their to be football dang it... But what can I do besides cry about it? I have less power then the fly I just swatted.
Fryowa
Administrator
Because universities don't make money off football. They make money from tuition and dorm fees.
Ree4
Well-Known Member
Yeah the answer is obvious for us but (ir)regardless of which one you make, you are going to piss off a lot of people.
They can thank Title IX for that... No matter how much they bring in they have to spend it pretty much
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Yeah, well F 'em. I'm no pantywaist liberal like most of you assclowns and I love football, but when I see that '86ing the football season is going to cause the athletic department a $70 million loss I just can't help but shake my head. It's disgusting how far the pendulum of the "sports entertainment business" model has swung toward "business." When you have a putative "non-profit" organization pushing that sort of money through on football, the balance of the universe just ain't right. I hope that this shit pushes sports back toward fun, rather than business. When you push the content to pay channels and are hitting fans for damned near a grand for a decent season ticket, you are basically selling out the future to maximize profits today. I don't think the guys running these organizations understand that.
Ree4
Well-Known Member
Wait, an organization making hundreds of millions of dollars off the backs of "underpaid employees" has you all up in arms? You sound like a socialist.
I've felt for years now prior to this Covid stuff that we we're in a sports bubble of sorts. Not just college but pros too across the 4 major ones. With the TV money getting as insane as it has gotten it felt like something might pop. I thought it'd be baseball first with no salary cap and how they have 32 different ways of going about it and the insane $ that the players make that their business model just wouldn't be able to continue. All I know is it's not nearly as much fun to be a fan now as it was when I was a teenager... (25 yrs ago) . How much of that is nostalgia and how much is the times now I don't know. But it's legit.
Fryowa
Administrator
That, and people don't realize that even though we're talking in the hundreds of millions of revenue from athletics programs, it's peanuts to the universities.
Here are the endowments of a few B1G schools...
NW -- $11B
OSU -- $5.25B
PSU -- $4.55B
MN -- $3.9B
IA -- 1.58B
Iowa ranks 11th out of 14 conference schools in terms of bank accounts, and if they truly did lose $100M that would only be a little over 6% of the total university endowment not counting its other assets.
Even the biggest sports programs are a fart in the wind when you compare athletics to tuition, housing, and other income and assets.
Which not one sports talking head or anyone in news media would talk about because there's no shock value to that.
