Michael Rosenberg of Sports Illustrated has an interesting question for university administrators.
Rosenberg wants to know why schools are cancelling classes, but still sending teams to participate in conference tournaments?
According to Rosenberg, sending teams to tournaments is ‘illogical and wreckless’ since athletes could be exposed to COVID-19.
Check out his thoughts:
Indiana University just announced it won’t hold in-person classes until at least April 6 because of the coronavirus. Michigan State won’t hold face-to-face classes until April 20 for the same reason.
But this week, men’s basketball teams from both schools will play in front of 20,000 people 50 miles away from the IU campus.
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This is illogical and reckless. There is no rational defense for it. This is not an academic issue or a campus issue. It’s a burgeoning public health crisis, getting worse by the day, and with every game played in front of large crowds, college conferences just feed our worst suspicions about them: The games are more important than classes, and revenue trumps everything else.
A quick recap, since this is sometimes misconstrued: Nobody is saying that if you go to a game today, you’ll probably get COVID-19. Closing arenas immediately is a proactive measure, not a reactive one. It won’t end the coronavirus threat. But it can slow the spread of COVID-19, to avoid overtaxing our medical infrastructure and mitigate the societal damage and death toll as much as possible.
That is why so many jurisdictions around the world have canceled large indoor gatherings. You may think this is an overreaction. But when these schools canceled classes, they came down on the side of many medical professionals. So why don’t their presidents have the guts to, at minimum, keep the fans out of arenas?
