Did you know that college football has created major panic on campuses? It’s true. You may not know it if you don’t reside on a college campus, but college football has caused mass hysteria. People on campus are puking out of stress. Everyone’s too wound up to do any studying. Everyone’s collective blood pressure has risen 100 points. College campuses are on the verge of collapse.
Or, none of this is really happening, and it’s all a lie.
Don’t tell that to Christine Brennan. Our old friend from USA Today penned another gem. Brennan, if you’ve forgotten, denounced college football’s return. She did this a few weeks ago:
And yes, a darker day than when Jerry Sandusky raped little boys. Some college football games amid an overblown pandemic is worse than little boys being raped.
Brennan is a deranged lunatic, so let’s find out why she believes there’s utter panic on college campuses amid the return of college football. I’m going to break down her article, though I’d advise you to click the link and read the nonsense for yourself.
Panic has set in on many American college campuses in the midst of the pandemic, and athletic departments, having completely sold their souls to their football programs, are taking out their frustration on a most unusual series of targets: their swimmers, their gymnasts, their runners, their volleyball players. <.i>
I’d like to know where Brennan is hearing that “panic has set in on many American college campuses.” Has she spoken to many people on these campuses? If so, have they all told her there is panic, or did most people say this? And if she did chat with these people about this alleged panic, where are the quotes?
“OMG THERES SO MUCH PANIC HERE ON AMERICAN COLLEGE CAMPUS BECAUSE OF FOOSBALL AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!,” a college student never said.
That’s one more quote than Brennan had in her article. Lazy blue-check journalism at its finest.
Trying to save a buck in difficult financial times, athletic directors around the nation are slashing their men’s and women’s Olympic sports rather than asking their football programs to go without, say, a third-string punter or new carpet in the weight room. Oh wow, how interesting. Colleges are giving funding to the sport that makes them the most money. You don’t say! If another sport generated the same amount of money as football, it would receive a new carpet as well.
Seriously, what’s the complaint here? Colleges are a business. Businesses need to make money. Why would colleges fund something that loses money for them, i.e. every sport other than football and basketball?
And what’s with the “third-string punter” nonsense? College football teams don’t have third-string punters. Well, maybe except for Vanderbilt.
How silly of me to even write such a sentence, knowing football is so important financially to athletic directors and university presidents that many of them are willing to stake their careers on playing it in this season of COVID-19 and hoping they don’t kill anyone in the process.
If this is about college sports being played, then why even mention the other sports? It seems like Brennan wants to complain on so many things that she can’t focus.
And who is Fauxvid-19 killing in the process? No one, that’s who. The survival rate of people in the age bracket of college football players is 99.98 percent, and that doesn’t even factor in that college players are in peak condition in the primes of their athletic careers. If they get infected, they won’t even know it. No football player has even been hospitalized. Wow, what a super serious virus.
Pruning a non-revenue sport or two or 11 is both awful and short-sighted. These are decisions university leaders immediately say they regret, but that’s not even the worst of it. By eliminating these sports and driving away these student-athletes, they are weakening their university community by getting rid of the best among them.
So, we’re back to complaining about other sports not being played. I don’t get what Brennan wants. If college football being played is creating panic, then why does she want other sports to be played?
And who cares, anyway? So what if Minnesota cancels its volleyball program? Would anyone care? Would anyone even notice?
Stanford is one of our great universities, but it is worse, not better, without its fencers, field hockey players and wrestlers, among others. The same goes for Iowa without its men’s and women’s swimmers and divers, male gymnasts and male tennis players; Minnesota without its gymnasts, tennis players and indoor and outdoor track and field athletes (all male); and William & Mary without its volleyball team, men’s and women’s swimmers, men’s and women’s gymnasts and men’s indoor and outdoor track and field athletes.
Why is Stanford worse without its fencers and field hockey players, and blah blah blah, I don’t feel like re-typing those other sports because no one cares. Seriously, no one cares. I would agree that the schools aren’t better without those sports, but they certainly aren’t worse because they are all irrelevant. Barely anyone knows they exist.
Those young people who lost their teams, and the chance to play for their schools, more than likely were engaged students and on track to graduate on time, then move on to successful careers. It’s fairly certain a student-athlete like that would have given back to his or her athletic department and school in ways big and small for the next 50 to 60 years, school pride being a central theme to their athletic existence.
An interesting argument. Oh wait, no, it’s not. You know who gives back more money to athletic departments than anyone else? Rich football and basketball players. No one makes a crap ton of money from fencing and field hockey. Because, again, no one cares.
At William & Mary, though, the university community has risen up for a fierce fight to save the 118 athletes and 13 coaches affected by the elimination of the seven sports. The athletic director is gone, while alumni from those sports are aggressively campaigning for the programs’ reinstatement.
Great. And I hope they get what they’re seeking. But if they don’t, it won’t really matter in the long run. It’s hardly worth writing about.
In other words, the athlete alums are the very people William & Mary should have known they would be: totally engaged, looking out for their school, fighting for those who came after them, the kind of people they should never want to lose.
Cool story, bro.
Here’s the next part, where Brennan actually addresses the panic she mentioned earlier:
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That’s it. That’s the end of the article.
Um, where is this alleged panic that Brennan discussed earlier? She brought it up in the opening paragraph and never referenced it again.
So, I guess to answer the question in the title of this column, no, there is no panic. Or, maybe we should ask another college student.
“OOOMMMGGGG OOMMMMMMGGGGG AHHHHHH I’M PANNNICCKIIINGG FOOORRR NOOO REEEAASSONNN AHHHHHHHH!!!!!”
Looks like Brennan was right after all, for once.
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