It should come as no surprise that organizations run by rabidly anti-Trump fanatics will spare no effort to defeat the president in November.
If that includes blighting the irreplaceable athletic careers of college football players by cancelling 2020 football season, then so be it.
The goal is to ramp up the misery, shift the blame to President Trump and clear him out of the White House.
Both the Pac-12 and the Big 10 have cancelled the fall football season for universities participating in those conferences.
The leftists who run universities and the conferences assure us the decision was made with regret and for the athlete’s own good.
In the Big 10 it was all solemn faces as the commissioner announced, "As time progressed and after hours of discussion with our Big Ten Task Force for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Big Ten Sports Medicine Committee, it became abundantly clear that there was too much uncertainty regarding potential medical risks to allow our student-athletes to compete this fall."
The Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott was also a full-fledged member of the Great Pandemic Panic, "We cannot bubble our student-athletes like pro sports can. We are part of broader campus communities. Student-athletes are living with pure students and on-campus interacting [with them.]"
Every school cancelling football points to vague, undefined threats from the China flu that is evidently just daring the U.S. to begin playing football so the virus can attack.
And for some reason those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) become incapable of evaluating the science they claim to value so highly when making their decision.
Here are the facts available to anyone with an internet connection:
Sunlight kills the virus. Football takes place in the sun.
In a study of 318 outbreak clusters in China — home of the "Kungflu" — only two of the outbreaks occurred outdoors. Football practice (see above).
The CDC calculates for a person between the ages of 15 and 24 (think football age) living in the U.S. the chance of any type of death during a single year is 80 deaths per 100,000 population. According to Johns Hopkins the current death rate for the "Wuflu" is 30 deaths per 100,000 and 80% of those are among the elderly.
The chance of a football player dying from the "China flu" is about one-third the chance of dying from any random cause.
As Michael Shannon has written elsewhere, the only players who might face an elevated risk are those morbidly obese offensive and defensive linemen.
We think the game can get by with 270-pound offensive and defensive linemen as it did for decades before the recent era’s Great Bloating. The big tuskers with underlying conditions can stay home and lose weight on a full scholarship.
When one ponders the inherent risks of playing football — a game where large people collide with each other at top speed — we predict college teams will face far more hospitalizations for knee injuries than from the "Wufluenza."
The one item each and every one of the administrators and bureaucrats killing college football have in common is the clock isn’t ticking on their career. They can push paper next year, too. The athletes aren’t so fortunate.
Michael Reagan, the eldest son of President Reagan, is a Newsmax TV analyst. A syndicated columnist and author, he chairs The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Michael is an in-demand speaker with Premiere speaker’s bureau. Read Michael Reagan's Reports — More Here.
Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher for the League of American Voters, and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!)". Read Michael Shannon's Reports — More Here.