BIG TEN CANCELS FOOTBALL

I'm shocked. It's the only way I know of expressing my feelings over the announcement from the Big Ten canceling their College Football season. Having lived in Columbus, Ohio for a dozen years. I'm shocked.

Looking over the history of college football in Ohio it's easy to see why it is as part of the yearly life cycle of just about every Ohioan. Ohio State University has records for the football team going back to 1890 with not one year missing. That's continuous play for 130 years.

My time in Ohio was spent in warehouses. Most with over 250 asses and elbows working together. At one the count was over 2500. OSU football was in their DNA. It wasn't just a thing to do. Fall lives are built around games. It's ritualistic. It's religious.

Why this is so shocking for me is, well, look around. Nothing is still shutdown. There might be modifications to how they are running, but everything is humming along. Why I go into town here in Virginia, be it here in the conservative valley or in the liberal hotbed of DC, Northern Virginia - places are packed with people. A slightly modified version of what we once know of life is again being lived.

A PERSON'S VALUE

I had to call a plumber last week to fix what was causing a backup in my main water pipe. It was a mess and beyond my reach as an eager handyman guy. Young guy was on the job, probably mid-20s. Fixed me all up in a couple hours. 

Amazon, my employer for a couple years, has been working over full strength through the pandemic. A majority of the workers in their warehouses are between the ages of 18-25. College-age. Another former company - Art.com, never shut down. 

Are the lives of college "kids" somehow more important than those of the rest out there in the workforce? It's a question I'm not going to tackle in this post, but it does speak to the growing divide in this country (the haves, who participate in "normal" America and the have-nots, who look at it through a window).

BAFFLED

I'm not a college football fan. While this decision they have made is morally correct, it makes zero sense. The students want to go to school. They want to play sports. The fans want the games. The coaches and administrators want the games. 

For a 20-year-old, one year is a lifetime of memories. Every life lived has its own winding path, filled with hardship, but this one, at least to me, is completely out of left field.

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Last note that I keep hearing about. "Litigation." Give me a break. Colleges have more control over what goes on than I had over my childhood GI Joe kingdoms. All these horrific abuse cases at big colleges like Michigan State, Penn State, Ohio State and life hardly skips a beat in those towns. 

Every other sports league is functioning at some level. I have issues with MLS and their plans to restart (again!) with fans, but not with them trying to go. NBA, NHL, NASCAR, LigaMX, MLS, Cornhole, literally everything else is going. Too dangerous for little Jordan, I guess. Who knows.