Big Ten Cancellation

By Colton Fellure

On August 19th Big Ten Commissioner, Kevin Warren, announced that all Big Ten schools will not be participating in fall sports and activities because of COVID-19. The college sports world was shocked, especially the college football world. The Big Ten is home to some of the top powerhouse football schools in the nation including The Ohio State University, Penn State, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The Big Ten has hopes to play their season in the Spring. The Big Ten however isn’t the only power 5 conference to cancel their fall season, the PAC-12 who is home to powerhouses Oregon and Washington also decided to cancel their season.

Do I agree with the decision to cancel the fall football season? Not one bit and let me explain why. These schools are going to be opening up their campus and are going to allow students to attend class, with some precautions of course, these schools are some of the biggest in the country holding 30,000+ students. These students are going to be walking around campus and attending class together but you’re telling me 80 football players who are in the safest condition with some of the best medical staff you can find can’t play football? Yeah of course there’s a risk to get it but everyone has that risk. My point is that 30,000+ students can go to class together but only 80 football players who before the cancellation all tested negative for the virus can’t play football together. To these players, football is all they got. They come from terrible home lives and have seen things and football is their only way to escape that reality and it helps them from going down the wrong path.

With these cancellations it has some of college football’s biggest stars taking action via social media. Clemson’s star QB Trevor Lawrence said via twitter “People are at just as much, if not more risk, if we don’t play. Players will all be sent home to their own communities where social distancing is highly unlikely and medical care and expenses will be placed on the families if they were to contract covid19” he also went on to say that all the players will take all the right precautions and do anything they need to so they won’t contract the virus, and without the season people will still continue to not wear their masks and take proper precaution. There have been petitions made that have been signed by hundreds of thousands of people, the biggest being started by Ohio State star QB Justin Fields.

This isn’t the first time that there has been something that could’ve potentially interfered with the college football season, and isn’t the first time there was a pandemic. Back in 1918 they had a season during the Spanish Flu pandemic, the Spanish Flu was similar and maybe even worse than COVID and they still played a season. They have played through wars also, two of the biggest wars ever perhaps. So through wars and disease they still have managed to play in the past, what makes this instance so different?

There may be still hope though. On September 1st, the President Donald Trump spoke with the commissioner of the Big Ten, they had a productive conversation and there may be a re-vote and the season for the Big Ten could start as early as October. In conclusion the cancellation in my opinion was likely a panic decision because something like this hasn’t happened in a long time and most people don’t know what to do. I’m still hopeful for a season for the Big Ten and just a semi-normal college football season to help distract me and many others from everything going on in the world.