mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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12-30-20 04:37 PM - Post#318343
In response to PennFan10
First, let’s start with this notion that the Ivy League didn’t try. It tried. It had its teams engaging in athletic activities, and the issue was that they couldn’t consistently stick in higher phases and kept getting bumped back down to phase zero. As far as I understand it, it was that inability to maintain in-person activities for any extended period of time without having an outbreak that was the final straw that broke the back of moving forward with a 20-21 season.
Second - let’s address this “everyone’s moving forward with their seasons†argument. It’s misleading. Yes. College football teams have made it to the finish line, but many that could opted out of bowl games, others had too many positive tests to move forward with bowl games and at certain points in the season roughly a third of football games were being cancelled per week. College basketball has had a similarly rough and bizarre start not including what we might ultimately find out about Keyontae. Yes, these seasons have moved forward, but not without a ton of cancelled games and positive student athletes, something that the Ivies wouldn’t have powered through - so the season wouldn’t have lasted long even if the league “gave it the old college try,†as has been asked.
Finally, we’ll see what happens with non-Power 5 basketball and how that ultimately unfolds, but the Power 5 conference teams are merely playing to be good partners to get their full TV contracts. It’s why ACC teams opted out of the bowls - their job fulfilling the media contract was done at the end of the regular season. The student athletes on those teams voted not to play in the bowl games because they were just worn out from such a crazy season.
I’m not objecting to the notion that there can be differing opinions on the issue of whether to play or not. I’m objecting to the notion that the presidents wouldn’t have played or even considered playing no matter what. If Ivy teams had been able to stay in higher phases consistently, cases nationally stayed really low and we didn’t have a third of football games wiped out weekly, things might have turned out differently. All of those worked massively against us right when this decision had to be made. There’s no denying that the assumption the presidents were deadset against playing this year was a reasonable conclusion to draw based on the past behavior of that group, but it’s misplaced in this case.
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