Big 10 Football

[Cheerful]

From USA Today:

The Big Ten's announcement included extensive information about medical protocols for practices and games, including daily testing before practices and games for everyone on the field and a designated Chief Infection Officer at each school. If the team positivity rate exceeds 5 percent on a seven-day rolling average, practices and competition must stop for a week.

The Big Ten will also require any athlete who tests positive for COVID-19 to be withheld from game competition for 21 days and undergo comprehensive cardiac testing, including an MRI that could detect inflammation of the heart. That data will be put into a cardiac registry to help further the study of COVID-19 effects.

So, athletes are 1. special, and 2. lab rats for Covid research.

[ohnoes]

So, athletes are 1. special, and 2. lab rats for Covid research.

That's not fair. 

They're *uncompensated* lab rats for Covid research.

[Cheerful]

So, athletes are 1. special, and 2. lab rats for Covid research.

That's not fair. 

They're *uncompensated* lab rats for Covid research.

Yes, I mean they are being exploited.

[lightning]

IRB?

[FishProf]

So, athletes are 1. special, and 2. lab rats for Covid research.

That's not fair. 

They're *uncompensated* lab rats for Covid research.

The aren't *uncompensated*.

They get free tests and MRIs don't they?

[Anselm]

So, athletes are 1. special, and 2. lab rats for Covid research.

That's not fair. 

They're *uncompensated* lab rats for Covid research.

The aren't *uncompensated*.

They get free tests and MRIs don't they?

Back in the old days they got new sports cars and the boosters would hand them cash upon leaving the locker room after a game.  However I am sure that is a thing of the past and clean noble amateurism is back in force.

I can understand how people were upset about closed churches and not being able to see loved ones at a funeral or in a nursing home.  Maybe the rules were too strict.  I see no reason whatsoever to play football and have people in the stadiums.  We can live without that for a while.

[kaysixteen]

Obviously Trump is heavily pressuring them, and this is after all the home stretch for the election.   But am I also correct to note that the 'football culture' in Big 10 land is vastly greater than it would be for elite northeastern Slacs or state unis, and many locals who have never had any personal connections to the uni are still rabid fans?   That and given that many of these folks are mask avoiders, etc,, suggests to me that exploiting kids for fun is not something they are likely to be greatly worried about.... and how could they be educated to change that view?

[pgher]

Obviously Trump is heavily pressuring them, and this is after all the home stretch for the election.   But am I also correct to note that the 'football culture' in Big 10 land is vastly greater than it would be for elite northeastern Slacs or state unis, and many locals who have never had any personal connections to the uni are still rabid fans?   That and given that many of these folks are mask avoiders, etc,, suggests to me that exploiting kids for fun is not something they are likely to be greatly worried about.... and how could they be educated to change that view?

That's right. Many locals think of the university as a sports program with some classes attached. That's a generations-old problem now that won't be easily changed.

The real issue is that other conferences (SEC, ACC) are playing, so Big Ten doesn't want to miss out.

[kaysixteen]

The issue of whether they should play (which most of us probably think they should not) is a very hard one to get such people to accept, precisely because they  are a demographic, and in a location, where opposition to more or less everything people like us think about the pandemic, the relative importance of sports and academics in a college/ uni, etc., is pretty darn strong.  I am open to suggestions, but of course I do not live in such a place....

BTW, do these power football conferences have anything set up, wrt what they are going to try to get these players to sign/ agree to, in terms of the schools' responsibility for ill effects acquired through football-related covid contraction, and, would such agreements, which presumably would be heavily weighted in the schools' favor, really stand up in court?