Fractured college football mirrors America’s deep division on how to handle a pandemic | Opinion

Who is in charge here? Anyone?

We haven’t seen this before. Not at any time, in any major sport.

It has elements of anarchy. Mutiny. Insanity, even.

Hello, NCAA? Anybody home?

Like pandemic-plagued 2020 itself, what we see happening in college football ahead of this fractured 2020 season is unprecedented. Wait. No. There was the Spanish Flu of 1918 as a pandemic precedent. But in terms of sports? Nope. This is a first.

College football always has been an entity of many conferences at different levels, but with a cohesion to it. One sport under one umbrella, under one governing body.

Now we see a sport splintered, going in starkly different directions.

The Power 5 Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences announcing Tuesday they would not play football in 2020 was the biggest sports headline of this coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic. Other smaller conferences and individual colleges already had done so.

Now the onus is on the sport’s three other major leagues — Southeastern Conference, Atlantic Coast Conference and Big 12 — to follow the path of safety first, of prudent caution, or be seen as recklessly putting revenue over the health of their student-athletes.

And all indications are they will follow the money, of course.

But even that is a crapshoot in a fluid time of uncertainty.

“We’re going forward. The Big 12, SEC and ACC have made their decision,” as director of athletics Blake James of the ACC’s Miami Hurricanes told us Wednesday. “But we can’t say anything with certainty. Can anything change? Without a doubt.”

UM is scheduled to open its season in less than a month, on September 10 against Alabama-Birmingham. Will there be fans at Hard Rock Stadium? No firm decision yet, but, “I’m prepared for there to be no fans,” James said. “We’re trying to prepare our fan base there very well could be no fans this year.”

I asked James if the Big Ten and Pac-12 have taken the moral high road and left conferences still planning to play in 2020 to be perceived as putting revenue ahead of the safety and health of student-athletes.

“Our communication with our medical people and what we’re doing is in line with the safety of the young people,” he said.

In a very real way the divide we are seeing in college football — the moral tug between safety first and economics — mirrors America at large. We have no cohesive national policy on fighting this pandemic, which is why the United States still is in its grip in a way many other countries are not.

Policies on social distancing, mask-wearing, opening the economy, reopening schools and everything else are left to states and counties, whose sense of caution have varied wildly.

Likewise, there is no national policy in college football. It’s a free-for-all.

To some, the Big Ten and Pac-12 are doing the right thing. To others, the SEC, ACC and Big 12 should be applauded.

Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields tweeted, “Smh...” over the Big Ten’s postponement.

Hmm, OK. But I might point out to Justin what else might merit a “shake my head”:

How about playing football, a sport that insists on close contact on every play, in a pandemic?

How about traveling to road games as if the still-pervasive coronavirus had not already killed 165,000 Americans?

The Big Ten’s vote to postpone was not unanimous. Now Nebraska is talking about still trying to play, a sort of civil mutiny from its own conference .

The tumult of college football in 2020 also has seen players, led by many in the Pac-12, uniting to make demands including compensation. There is talk of forming a college football players union.

And what of the Big Ten and Pac-12’s hope to play their 2020 season in the spring of ‘21? Will it be safer to do so then, or might the pandemic be just as bad?

Pulling off a spring season will pose a logistical nightmare. It would occur as the NFL is staging its Scouting Combine and building up to its draft, leading UM’s James to predict “a greater number of kids will opt out.” There also would be the physical toll of ending a spring season and having only a short time off before preparation for the 2021 season would begin.

Other major sports have been of a single mind and moved united through this pandemic, at least.

Can you imagine if the NBA Eastern Conference decided to forego resuming this season while the West continued to play? Or if teams in four of the eight NFL divisions voted to skip the coming season while the rest played on?

In essence we are seeing that play out in college football as one sport mirrors a nation.

Some are making a priority of utmost caution and safety.

Others are willing to take on the risk of pretending everything is normal when absolutely nothing is.

In college football, as in America.