CFB is basically cancelled is it safe for our kids to play?

This isn't just about the virus, IMO.  There hasn't any significant change in cases since a week or so ago.  But what happened 10 days ago?  The Pac-12 players formed a group threatening to boycott, asking for things like 50% of revenues (pipe dream), agreed-upon safety protocols, basically a guarantee that they would be safe from the virus this fall (like that's even possible) and a whole bunch of other stuff.  Now I think they deserve some of it - definitely uniform testing & safety protocols.  And NIL rights.  But some of it was just completely unreasonable and it completely caught the schools off guard.  Big 10 players joined in the fray and formed a group too.  I don't know if I ever saw their demands or if they simply said "ditto" to what the Pac-12 group said.  But they expressed deep concerns about their safety.  Good for them.  Problem is, they did all of this so late in the process that the schools were caught flat-footed.  They're just not ready to designate the players as anything other than "student athletes" and they're also scared as hell of lawsuits from any players who contract the virus and have serious health issues or, worse, die from it.

My daughter just played in the Concorde tournament, as did a whole bunch of other kids.  And we know tournaments typically have way more people roaming the fields than we do during regular season matches.  So why is it so unsafe to play club soccer? 

As of today, just under 15,000 kids from the ages of 5-17 have tested positive for Covid-19 in the state of GA:

dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report (scroll down to the case demographics)

Of those, 189 have been hospitalized and 2 have died.

According to the most recent US census data, approximately 1.8M children aged 5-17 live in Georgia.  That's an infection rate of just under 0.833%.  While I don't have the numbers for how many are asymptomatic, I do know that we've consistently heard a very low % of those kids with the virus have shown anything more than mild symptoms.

So does anyone really think the situation with this virus will be better in the spring?  A vaccine may be ready, but initially I think it won't be available to anyone but the most vulnerable to Covid-19.  This virus won't just suddenly go away either or even die out.  So what do we do?  

I love your last point.  I believe the country is hope(ing) things will get better over time.  However, without policy changes and or a vaccine we will be in the same place in 6 months as now.  We are in the same place 3 months ago as today.  The ONLY time the curve really was bending was 2 or 3 weeks after everyone had to shelter in place.  We know we are not going to do that again, so I say nothing will change in the country until after the inauguration if there is a leadership change.

The best response I saw was a Big 10 Reporter who said:

“When the University Presidents of the Big 10 open their campuses to tens of thousands of students in the coming weeks, they’ll lose any room to say this was about the kids’ safety.

This is about liability. Plain and simple.”


He’s sort of got a point.

I’ll tell you what’s changed and changing- the reopening of schools. Having see the complete incompetence of the Cherokee county school system and their leadership over the last 7 days has absolutely blown my mind. They have no idea what they are doing and now with all of the quarantines there are no teachers left in class rooms and no substitutes dumb enough to go into the infested buildings for $95 per day. How about that for face to face learning.

Give it another few weeks and there will be a huge spike in cases regardless of how many other counties follow suit. We’ve made a huge mistake so Please take my advise- if you still have a choice between F2F or digital please choose digital.

Thanks in advance to the government schools for cancellation of the fall soccer season!

While I agree with you to an extent COVID lead to the fever which lead to the seizure that lead to the drowning death. They count deaths like this all the time for other things, like cancer. Most cancer deaths are from the treatment or the palliative care (i.e. morphine for pain) or the complications of cancer like big blood clots that go to your lungs and kill you but they only got the blood clot because they had cancer.

Interesting...safety aside, I think the seniors and juniors in the Pac-10/Big-10 springing this on the system just lost the performance combine that the college football season provides. Now they have no little reason to practice, and very little incentive to train/condition, keep their fitness up, etc...for nearly an entire year. This could change things significantly, the NCAA's and colleges' backs were against the wall with regards to the finances/pay-for-play issue. Now the threat of COVID kinda sidelined their campaign and the schools/league can simply argue they cancelled the season due to safety concerns. Now the athletes have lost their ONLY marketing tool for the NFL (actually competing and playing on Saturdays).

This gives the NCAA and colleges the opportunity to come up with a uniform package deal, or to avoid it entirely. It would also allow many colleges to opt out of the pay-for-play system (wanna get paid, go to those "other schools" that do that). There will always be a market for college football, but the same market likely won't exist for a minor-league system. This could change the dynamics of college football permanently. IMO, college football/basketball/baseball SHOULD be about student-athletes, like every other sport fielded by colleges. I think its time for a minor-league/farm-system or for those young people to go international out of HS, and we drop the student-athlete facade for those sports. College football fans will pay for the product even if its at a lower level than it has been the past couple decades, its school/state/tribalism pride; the players rotate out but the fans come back every year.


Regarding COVID:
I'm pretty sure that the death under 9 was the 7-year-old boy who had a seizure and drowned in the bathtub (heartbreaking, but technically not a death from COVID). What is far more concerning to me is that today we "beat" the state's the highest daily death count BY A LARGE MARGIN. Yet we are still where we were in April, some 84% of deaths are over 60-years of age, still primarily affecting the oldest. I think that unless things get dramatically under control, by the end of August we will see a full shutdown. 


Also, just imagine for a minute that if for every person diagnosed with cancer they diagnosed every family member living in the household as having cancer also.  Or an even better comparison, every person in the house was diagnosed/counted as having HIV.  The counting is nuts, and we have NO HANDLE on how many people actually have caught the damn virus...

College football is big business for these colleges. It’s a 1 billion dollar business for Tuscaloosa. Why would college presidents turn away that money? I agree with almost all replies here. At our location for the Concorde tournament almost zero social distancing and no one was wearing a mask.
Several high schools are back and cases are on the rise. My daughter is a cheerleader and several of her teammates and one coach have tested positive. I get all the stats of how many kids die from the virus. I’m just not sure I could live with myself if one of my kids contracted it playing a sport. Hate to bust everyone’s bubble but our kids aren’t going pro at soccer, baseball, or basketball.

Imagine being a kid who had to go to school in person.. carrying C19 home and killing a relative. Gonna suck to live with that for the rest of your life, amirite?

As I’ve stated on here before-10 days for my test to come back. At that point it’s a historical document.

Very concerning

I do know that about Michigan and do you think a multi million dollar college football program is doing more to protect their players then youth soccer teams? regardless of what anyone believes about the politics of this virus these universities makes millions and millions of dollars off of college football. Why would they play politics to lose millions of dollars?

Thanks for chiming in with your obvious bias lol.  Come on, that's saying they would be willing to cut off their nose to spite their face to risk millions and millions of dollars(and their jobs).  Who the President is has nothing to do with this decision.

I'm so sick of this crap on this forum.  If you are scared and have reservations don't go to training and game and keep your kids at home, but under no circumstances become a Karen and complain about how others are doing something you don't agree in and wanted it stopped.  Live your live and let others live there.

Second of all CFB did not cancel.  ACC and SEC and likely the Big 12 are moving forward.  This is no surprise to me at all.  The conferences in more "blue" areas cancelled and the conferences in more "red" areas opted to continue.  Football will be played one way or the other, so quit making the blanket statement that it is all cancelled.

The kids want to play.  It is not harmful to them in any statistically relevant way, and if you are scared, vulnerable, etc... stay home just don't get in everyone else's way.

The colleges do have better testing, but a big part of the reason for them cancelling is due to lost revenue by not having fans attend games and all the money they spend each weekend.  They are hopeful to be able to play in the Spring with fans in the stands.