Put Me in Coach - I'm Ready to Play

byzydegeaux

585 followers

4 years ago

Are you ready for some football

A Monday night party
Hey, this is "Rocking" Randall Hank
Ready to get the good time started
We got the teams on the field
And we turned down the lights
All my rowdy friends are back for Monday night

Will there even be any football? Or basketball? College players have reported to their campuses to begin training for the fall season and already there have been a number of them throughout the country who have tested positive for Covid 19. We already have golf and NASCAR racing under way before empty grandstands and golf courses are not allowing spectators. The German soccer league is playing games and there is Korean baseball if you want to get up at 4 AM to watch.

Golf is played in twosomes and threesomes with no physical contact between the players. NASCAR drivers are alone in their cars but the pit crews are at some risk because of the necessity of teamwork in changing tires, refilling fuel tanks and making adjustments on the cars.

I think there may be tennis underway too but I'm not sure.

Those other sports involve a minimum of contact between the players but football and basketball are contact sports. The NBA is planning to resume playing the last 8 games of the regular season at Disney World in Orlando. Lots of hotels and plenty of courts for the teams to hold practice. Counting the time to get back in basketball shape and through the games until the finals players will be isolated even from their own families for weeks. This can't make them very happy.

Major League Baseball will hold a greatly shortened 60 game season starting this month. Several high profile players have already said they would sit it out, citing the risk to themselves and their families.

Even if they manage to hold the seasons before empty stadiums there may be some emergency schedule changes. Maybe like playing conference games only. College football is of huge importance in the south and midwest. The SEC and the Big 10 are going to play football come hell or high water. The smaller schools that depend on the money from a road game against a major power to take their beating need that money to support the college's entire athletic departments.

Even for the big time schools how long is it sustainable to have games in empty stadiums when they normally sell from 80,000 to over 100,000 tickets per game? Not to mention concessions, parking and all the other ways they bring in revenue.

And the economic impact on the cities where they are located will be devastating. Here in Baton Rouge LSU makes over $3 million for a home game and then additional millions for a conference championship game, playoffs or a bowl game. Be the businesses in the city not only benefit from a home game they depend on it. Already reeling from the pandemic closures no football would be the straw that sends a lot of restaurants, bars and hotels into bankruptcy.

I'm sure it's the same in other football mad towns like Columbus, OH, Austin TX and even little Tuscaloosa AL and Athens GA with the majority of their crowds coming from nearby larger cities Birmingham and Atlanta.

I have been watching very little TV since the shutdown. There are almost no sports, I rarely watch the fake news and the shows I regularly watched have all finished their seasons. Even the entertainment industry has been greatly impacted. The last episode of the Blacklist had only been partially filmed before the shutdown. Since they couldn't get all the actors together in one place to finish they inserted animated sequences of the character's interactions. It was a bit unsettling to watch. The animations were not very close to what the actors look like.

I don't have cable. I have YouTube TV. It's a streaming platform with the same content as basic cable. When I first subscribed 3 years ago it was $40 a month. Last year they went up to $50 a month. Last week I got an email saying that starting in August it will be going up to $65 a month. I'll keep it for August but if the football season is canceled I'm dropping it like a hot potato.

By the way with all the team names and everything in the interest of not offending even the most fragile snowflake I am worried. LSU's team nickname is The Fighting Tigers. Who could object to the name Tigers other than PETA, you may ask. By the way PETA stands for People Eating Tasty Animals. Anyway the mascot name doesn't come from the feline tiger even though there is a live Tiger mascot living in a $3 mllion habitat across the street for Tiger Stadium (another PETA thing they don't like) and there is a picture of an officially licensed tiger on much of the team caps and shirts and stuff, the name comes from the Confederate Army Unit called The Fighting Tigers. Please don't tell anybody this,