Good morning, campers. Dig in.
- Greg Sankey sounds a little salty in this coronavirus-related Q&A.
- Sports247 ranks the nation’s top 25 head coaches. Kirby checks in at number four. The Portal Master™? Eighth.
- While we’re ranking Dawgs and Gators, Pro Football Network ranks the top ten quarterbacks for the 2021 NFL draft. Jamie Newman is fifth. Kyle Trask isn’t even an honorable mention. (h/t)
- If you’re interested, here’s Pete Fiutak’s preview of Boom’s Fighting Gamecocks.
- The NCAA approved a waiver that will allow schools to spend below the minimum level on athletic scholarships required to compete in Division I.
- Oregon Governor Kate Brown: “There is some difficult news to share. Large gatherings, including live sporting events with audiences, concerts, festivals and conventions, will not be able to return until we have a reliable treatment or prevention like a vaccine. The Oregon Health Authority is advising that any large gatherings at least through September should either be canceled or significantly modified. I know this is really, really hard.”
Get The Picture 
Man, the sports media people in Oregon are beside themselves over the governor’s statement. One sportswriter claimed the loss of the football season for Oregon would bankrupt most small businesses in Eugene. He claimed people in the SEC states would recall their governors or overthrow them by force if they made a similar statement.
The people in the sports media industrial complex are absolutely delusional. I enjoy most sports, but I truly believe college football is one of the most overrated and easily dispensable activities in American society.
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The loss of the football season would probably bankrupt many small businesses in Eugene just like the same thing will happen in Athens and just about every college town in America. It’s likely to do the same thing if the season is played with no fans in the stands. Are people going to drive to Athens for 6-7 weekends a year to sit in a parking lot with the radio on or set up a television, book 2 nights in an overpriced hotel, stop at the local adult beverage store, eat out for dinner, and then go to their favorite local bar after the game?
No. 80,000 people aren’t going to do even a subset of that. All of that revenue is gone with the wind. All of that drops straight to the bottom line and leads to business failures all over the town.
If I were a small business owner in Athens who depends on those 6-7 weekends a year to pay my bills, college football may not be the most important thing, but it’s my financial life line.
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This is so not true. The Kroger on College Station Road is not going to go bankrupt if there is no college football. Neither would all the CVS and Walgreens Pharmacies. The Varsity won’t go broke. Zaxby’s will endure. So will the Chinese buffet on Baxter Street, Krystal, Walmart, Target, Heyward Allen Toyota, and the Athens Banner-Herald.
MOST businesses in Athens will prevail even if college football never takes place again. There are a few bars and restaurants that won’t make it, but the food and beverage business is pretty volatile if you are not Weaver D.
Some of you guys act like college football is more important than the University itself. That’s delusional.
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Can you read? Sure, the businesses that serve the Athens community will survive but won’t thrive. Guess what? A lot of students select UGA because it’s a good school that has great sports and college life. If that went away, those businesses you talk about would eventually go away as enrollment falls and people gave less to the university as a whole. The SMALL businesses downtown will not survive a loss of a football season. Hell, small businesses are beginning to shutter all over the country due to the effects of the pandemic. Why don’t you go tell all of them that their businesses are expendable?
I don’t believe college football is more important than the university itself. If it weren’t important to the life of the university and to the Athens community, this wouldn’t be a topic on President Morehead’s agenda.
If you think college football is so unimportant, why do you keep commenting about it? Shouldn’t it be something to be ignored?
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The economic impact to Athens would be devastating. One of my friends owns an Athens retail establishment and told me that 5 big football weekends in the fall is where he makes all his profits with sales in the rest of the year keeping the store open and at break-even.
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I can definitely see that. If you have a store front in downtown Athens, the crowds you see those weekends are your Black Friday. If those go away or are dramatically reduced (let’s say only 30% of the stadium is made available), your profit is gone. Even in the scenario of limited attendance, how many people are going to make a weekend of it now that the traffic is 70% less? In either scenario, small business owners in Athens are going to lose a lot of what they have worked for years to build.
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You crazy.
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I get the impression Sankey is getting tired of being pushed and pulled and pressured by several different constituencies. Still, “We are prepared to start the season on time” is NOT AT ALL the same thing as “We will start the season on time”.
I don’t get the excitement about SEC Media Days. I used to work around PE teachers and the glorified ones at the college level, even those with law degrees, aren’t much different.
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The ironic thing about the Oregon Governor coming out against these types of social gatherings is that Oregon, more so than just about any state, is completely fine with open-air heroin use, junkies squatting in public parks and all over the sidewalks.
As with most “Karen” types, she’ll harass law abiding citizens and completely disregard the behavior of the lawless.
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Do tell. I have family there and have spent a lot of time in Oregon. I haven’t seen nor experienced the behavior you describe.
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interesting. When I visited Portland I saw junkies crowded all over the sidewalk downtown. My brother in law is a prosecutor in Eugene County so I hear about all the dregs he puts away.
No doubt this is a “false consciousness”
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Some of that is due to the fact that Oregon views heroin users as addicts who need help rather than criminals. Most heroin users aren’t trying to intentionally break laws and cause trouble. They are addicted to a very powerful substance (oftentimes stemming from the use of legally prescribed opioids) and need help to get themselves off of it.
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“When I visited Portland I saw junkies crowded all over the sidewalk downtown.”
Well, I hope you kicked a few of them. And if they’re all over the sidewalk your B.I.L must suck as a prosecutor.
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You’ll have to pry attending college football games from my cold, dead hands.
(Thinks about catching Coronavirus.)
Wait…
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Do they have calendars in Oregon? Holy shit.
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As bizarre as she, and her take, may seem, she isn’t wrong about the timing of large crowd seating events. And it isn’t just sports events, concerts, etc, that are in great jeopardy through the end of this year, probably longer. It isn’t just seating problems at large venues to be concerned about, say good bye to a healthy number of eat in restaurants/bars that will not survive this year due to both patron fear and physical configuration issues. When you throw out fast food and pizza establishments, over 50% of the dine-in restaurants may go under. Anyone with a large warehouse type building or a large fresh air dining set-up are in the best position to make comparable money.
I believe people are seriously underestimating the impact of this situation on how we have lived our lives prior to this point. And that doesn’t even include the debt issues. CFB will be the least of our concerns before we reach December, imo.
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Welcome to reality. What can you do to promote testing of everyone so that this pandemic can be managed in America like it has been for several countries that are already opening up with the infection rate going down rapidly?
We haven’t even begun to climb the hill of organization required to test and separate long enough to get ahead of this thing. After that comes the organization to get our society back to production again and then we get organized to bring cfb back (already being done by separate groups tending to separate problems at UGA for getting the students back on campus).
When will separate little people like us begin to push the powers responsible for getting the tests, applying the tests, and opening up society in a safe manner that impacts negatively on less than 1%? It won’t be anytime soon while all that we are doing is bitching and blogging about it.
Test, dammit, test.
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Mac, you are correct. The trickle down effect of losing these type of events (while discretionary and entertainment) is going to felt for a while. Heck, we’re going to see it beyond large events. Companies are realizing work can get done without putting 5,000 people in a downtown skyscraper. The restaurants, bars, and retail that spring up around those business districts are going to be hurt. The commercial real estate companies lose the value of the real estate they have built. Hotels in downtown business districts get hurt as people realize I don’t need to travel as much to do my job. Firms like mine are realizing we don’t need 8-10 floors of downtown class A office space. The dry cleaners in the lobby of the building is probably going to go out of business. The gym around the corner loses members and closes. CVS realizes that downtown store is no longer necessary and closes. The Starbucks on the corner that has a daily line out the door is operating at a fraction of its capacity for the price of the rent it’s paying.
Once people realize they can live wherever they want and be productive at work, they may decide living in crowded cities isn’t the best option especially in the age of post-pandemic. Why buy a condo in midtown close to the office when I work from home? I can buy a home close to where I want to live, have land, have a nice home office, and rarely deal with traffic.
Like an iceberg, we’ve only seen the visible, short-term effects of the fallout of this. All of the testing, PPE, and vaccination isn’t going to change the invisible, long-term effects of this.
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