Larry Stone: A COVID-19 conspiracy theory has reached college sports, including the UW-Oregon rivalry, and that’s a shame
SEATTLE – This is the golden age of conspiracy theories, of course. And it’s only natural, in these fraught times, that they’ve filtered down to sports. (And yes, I know the tin-hat brigade has been around forever, but there’s a mean-spiritedness these days that is both new and troubling.)
Case in point: Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski makes the perfectly sensible comment this week that it might not have been wise to launch the season while the COVID-19 pandemic is in full rage, and the blowback is immediate: Coach K is only saying that because his team isn’t as formidable as usual. Alabama coach Nate Oats didn’t even hint at it. He came right out and said it: “Do you think if Coach K hadn’t lost the two nonconference games at home that he’d still be saying that?”
Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin raised the notion a few weeks ago that some college football teams might be using COVID-19 as an excuse to get out of tough games. “Maybe some people don’t want to play. Maybe their season’s not going good. So who knows?” Kiffin told the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. I have yet to see if Kiffin’s opinion changed this week now that the Ole Miss had to call off Saturday’s game with No. 5 Texas A&M because of positive tests and quarantining within the Rebels’ program.
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney was even less subtle when he flat-out accused Florida State of ducking out of its game with the Tigers.
“This game was not canceled because of COVID. COVID was just an excuse to cancel the game,” Swinney said in November, adding that Florida State should be made to forfeit.
Which brings us to the hectic week in our own backyard, when the Pac-12, in consultation with Washington, made the excruciating decision Thursday to cancel the Huskies’ football showdown with Oregon on Saturday for the Pac-12 North title. The Huskies didn’t have enough scholarship players to compete because of positive cases and the resulting quarantining of players due to contact-tracing protocols.
Almost immediately, Twitter chatter began to be heard that the Huskies had somehow cooked up the COVID-19 cases to get out of playing Oregon. The theory was that because the cancellation gave the Huskies the North Division title through a fluke of bookkeeping, it was in their best interests not to play.
This is so patently absurd on so many levels that it almost doesn’t deserve a response. But I will give one anyway. First of all, it ignores the fact that the same COVID-19 guidelines that forced the Huskies to cancel Saturday almost certainly will keep them from playing in the Pac-12 title game Friday. It would be an empty title indeed and hardly worth such machinations.
In fact, it seems more plausible that the Huskies’ season is now over than the notion that they could pull an end-around to the title game. One wonders if they would have the stomach to regroup for a potential bowl game (or late-December Apple Cup) after a prolonged COVID-19-related hiatus. Two teams – Boston College and Pittsburgh – have already pre-emptively opted out of bowl games, and more are sure to follow.
The most salient counterpoint to any insinuations, however, is that it flies in the face of the competitive nature of players and coaches. This Husky team, like others in the Pac-12 and Big Ten, fought to be given its season back and has endured, for months, a host of stringent protocols to make it work. I hesitate to say they’ve made “sacrifices,” because that term should be reserved for those on the front line of health care and other essential services. But suffice it to say that they’ve had too much thrown at them to throw it away on a half-baked plan to back into the title.
Quite the contrary: I’m 100 percent convinced the Huskies desperately wanted to play Oregon to cap what has been, in its own unorthodox way, a successful season. But if there’s a point to be made, it’s this: No one in the wide realm of college sports should get on their high horse and cast aspersions over any school in regard to COVID-19. It’s not just bad karma; it’s faulty epidemiology. This virus so insidious that it can find its way through a seemingly impenetrable wall. And with the contact-tracing regulations, a small amount of positive tests can undermine an entire program. Cal had to call off its game with Washington over one positive test.
If we’re being honest, the question to be asked is not whether the Huskies somehow tanked the Oregon game to gain some kind of mythical advantage. That’s an insulting notion, a nonstarter, and best left to deep-state fan boards.
The burning question, which has bubbled under the surface for weeks (while emerging into the light of day at various junctures) is whether it was really worth it to play college football this year.
It’s a pretty heavy topic, and there’s no right or wrong answer (despite the strong opinions on both sides). As disruptive as this season has been, as problematic and chaotic and tense, a lot of athletes with finite expiration dates to their college careers have received the opportunity to play. That will be a lifetime memory. Fans have been able to throw themselves into fandom at a time when such distractions are heaven sent.
We are almost to the finish line, for better or worse. Though the rapid antigen tests in the Pac-12 that were touted as being able to head off COVID-19 transmissions didn’t lead to a virus-free season, and certainly not a smooth one, you could say they did their ultimate job of fending off super-spreading events.
The argument that college football players are safer under the scrutiny of an athletic department than in the general student population remains a salient one. And the counterpoint that we shouldn’t be prioritizing athletes in the midst of a pandemic still holds weight as well.
The next month, leading up to the College Football Playoff, will be the most difficult of all. Because as goes our nation, so goes college football, and the pandemic is again spiraling nearly out of control. Every new day, it seems, brings a record number of cases and deaths. There is real doubt in college football about its ability to conclude the season, especially with Christmas looming as the latest temptation to eschew protocols. The pending vaccine won’t come in time to help.
But there has been underlying doubt all along, and an ongoing procession of cancellations and postponements. It seems that teams have either endured a crisis, are in the midst of one, or are unknowingly awaiting one. COVID-19-shaming is a bad look when a good-faith effort is being made, and UW more than fits that description. Nearly every NCAA team does.
The cancellation of the UW-Oregon game is an all-around shame. But it’s the cost of doing business in 2020.