In one of my snarkier moments, I thought about posting a reader poll asking folks to speculate on how many kids dying from the coronavirus they could tolerate if they got a full 2020 college football season in exchange, but decided against, mainly because I didn’t think I could stomach seeing the results.
So, I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for this.
Saag, a professor of medicine and the director of UAB’s Center for AIDs Research, wondered what happens if the No. 1 team in the country gets told it can’t play for two weeks after a player or collection of players tests positive. Do you adjust the schedule? Does that team have to forfeit those games and thus miss out on its chance at a national championship?
Those scenarios have been bandied about throughout the college athletics world. They’ve also prompted concerns about the lengths some could take to keep football going even in the face of a pandemic. One Power 5 administrator openly speculated that teams might not be upfront about positive tests if it meant an automatic shutdown. “You better hope no school is covering things up,” the administrator told AL.com but they couldn’t help but be skeptical that a win-at-all-costs program would really shut it all down for a third-string punter.
Shit, of course that’s gonna happen. My question to you is, which coach goes there first?
Get The Picture 
The easy money would have been Urban Meyer.
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The Laner, hands down. Although I could make a case for his counterpart at MSU, too.
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I’m sure Leach thinks this is just a conspiracy made up by Bill Gates, Faucci, and the CDC. He hasn’t tweeted out “Plandemic”, has he?
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You beat me to it. In his absence, I’m gonna go with Dabo Swinney or Mike “I’m a man! I’m 40!” Gundy.
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I would not put it past Saban to knowingly put an infected player into a game to ruin the chances of a rival later in the season.
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If you can get 50 years out from this, the smack-talking from rivals over coronavirus cover-ups could still be going. It would be one of those traditions like us mocking Tech for fielding teams during WWI even though none of us were even alive when it happened.
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I’m going with Saban. Not because he would lie about infections on his team but because he would make damn sure his staff in charge of testing understood he didn’t have time for that shit and they would not and should not tell him.On a semi related note; exactly how many kids/athletes have died from covid-19? Last week when I looked it was zero. Perspective seems to be in short supply on this shit.
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Here you go:
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Sex-Age-and-S/9bhg-hcku/data
Quick answer is as of May 13, 39 males aged 15-24 have died of COVID-19 in the US.
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Just like Vietnam
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What about all the football players with leukemia?
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I, for one, would like the NCAA to commit to no longer playing games in old folks homes. They are LITERALLY killing grandmothers when they do this
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I’m trying to think of how to phrase this without sounding callous, as I don’t mean to diminish the seriousness of anyone catching this, as even some young athletes have co-morbidities such as asthma, sickle-cell, etc.
But to me, the ones most in danger are the coaching and support staffs. You look up and down the sidelines during a game and you’ll see a bunch of old fat guys all over the place (age and obesity are major contributors to the death rate). Not trying to be mean, but if somebody like Jim Chaney comes down with it, his life is legit in danger. I believe the first serious cases and/or deaths that we see will come from that area (coaches, support staff, older administrative employees in the AD that come in contact with the team), not from the athletes, as 99+ percent of them are likely to survive without major complications.
And as sad as it may be, I think if we see an outbreak among coaches, that is more likely to shut things down again than an outbreak among players.
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I’ve thought about that, too. Nick Saban, for example, is 69. Exposure for him could be very serious.
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He appears to be healthier than most 50 year olds to me…
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All y’all are just joking about this, right? You don’t seriously think head coaches would intentionally cover up a player testing positive, do you?
Because I’d be surprised if it DOESN’T happen, that someone will test positive once practices begin. Just like some players get the flu. But I think it’d be impossible to cover up, even if coaches wanted to cover it up.
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I bet they’d cover it up until a player gets tired of it/doesn’t want to go along with it and tells the media. Which might be the first time it happens, with this situation and all the related noise re: players getting paid and such.
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If anyone’s interested, here’s a link to the latest Covid data in GA
dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report
Scroll down to “covid-19 cases over time”
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That DPH site has been stupendously unreliable. We’ve changed the way we count, the way we report and reported erroneous information on multiple occasions. Our current count makes little sense to statisticians and medical professionals are constantly complaining the DPH makes accurately tracking our numbers nearly impossible.
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Currently the DPH site has the number of new cases in Georgia trending downward, and fairly steeply. Johns Hopkins, however, has the number of new cases in Georgia trending up. They can’t both be right.
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The person who was running the GDPH site was recently replaced. The numbers have been consistent with other reporting sites since.
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“I thought about posting a reader poll asking folks to speculate on how many kids dying from the coronavirus they could tolerate if they got a full 2020 college football season in exchange”. The better question is how many deaths would you accept to have football in the foreseeable future? MANY infectious disease experts are now saying that this may become endemic and just like the flu (before anyone starts, I know this is NOT the flu) could become seasonal. There is no guarantee that they will find a vaccine and treatment. If they do find a vaccine, is is almost 100% effective like Polio or Smallpox, or is it highly variable like the yearly flu vaccine with fairly significant outbreaks? Is it like AIDS where there is no vaccine? Does it burn itself out on it’s own? We don’t know what the future holds for this, but it could become a matter of accepting a certain level of mortality from it to proceed with daily life as we know it (and not just football). That sucks, but that is the reality.
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I’m coming to that same conclusion, Texas Dawg. Even if it’s not “forever”, I think it’s going to be long enough that we’re just going to have to go about our business and hope for the best (while washing my hands 20 times a day).
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Only 20 times a day?
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LOL. That was a great scene.
BTW, Read “Billion Dollar Whale”. That movie was financed with money stolen from a Malaysian wealth fund. Crazy stuff.
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I think I saw that in an episode of Dirty Money on Netflix.
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I should add that “going about my business” won’t be the same as before. I won’t be attending any games (not that I go to that many anyway). I have 8th row seats to the rescheduled Who show. I doubt I’ll go to that now. I’ll do what I have to to live my life, but I’ll still avoid certain activities for a long while. There are plenty of other enjoyable activities that don’t involve cramming myself in with tens of thousands of other idiots for hours on end. I’ve actually gotten back into running. Enjoyable and is probably good for me. And it makes drinking that much better. 🙂
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You’re saying locking everyone in a room until nothing bad happens again isn’t a viable plan? I don’t know man, sounds a little Nazi-ish.
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Good point. After all, if a woman can’t get her hair frosted when she wants, can we really say we live in a free society?
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The amount my wife and daughter spend on hair and nails each month plummeted from” HOLY SHIT THAT’S EXPENSIVE” to almost ZERO during the shutdown. In that I found a small silver lining in this ugly cloud.
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Freedom and liberty have definitely gotten a tortuous re-definition of late. Apparently if I can’t do whatever the hell I want, whenever the hell I want I ain’t free and you’re a fascist tyrant. I guess we need to get rid of all these pesky laws. They’re limiting my freedom. Stop signs and traffic lights? Who need ‘em? I should be able to go when I’m damn well ready to go. I’m an American and I got my rights. To heck with the rest of y’all.
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Exactly! Beauticians aRe LoOserS! Why don’t they get a job coding for google so they can work from home? People who are comfortable with measured risk ARE LITERALLY KILLING GRANDMOTHERS!
Enough is enough! We need to give Trump (LITERALLY HITLER) complete authority over every decision we make.
#WEAREINTHISTOGETHER
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Mike, if I didn’t know better I’d think that you were insinuating that this pandemic was a tad sensationalized and maybe we should consider allowing individuals to practice their trades/ ply their wares fairly while also allowing those who felt uncomfortable to remain sequestered to the degree they saw fit to protect themselves?
That’s crazy talk….
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#EliminateTheCurve
#LibertyIsn’tEssential
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Personally, I’m not watching another football game until someone can prove to me that not a single fan will die in traffic on the way to a game. Every life is precious and if we have to starve the whole damn world to make people stay home until someone invents a vaccine that prevents car crashes, then so be it.
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Speed limits and seat belt laws are fascist.
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Dammit! That was supposed to be a reply to tenesseewasnevergreat.
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No worries. It was still funny.
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Auburn then Clemson. Easy.
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Nearly 200 kids have died of season flu this year and sadly no one cares. Certainly not enough to alter society. Remember to look up from the media-driven covid microscope from time to time.
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