ANOTHER VIEWPOINT: Big rewards go to everyone but players

<p>Syracuse Post-Standard</p><p>Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy said the quiet part out loud back in April as the coronavirus pandemic was raging.</p><p>“They are 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22 years old and they are healthy and they have the ability to fight this virus off. If that is true, then we sequester them, and continue because we need to run money through the state of Oklahoma.”</p><p>Gundy later apologized for those remarks, but they exposed the truth facing most colleges today as they grapple with how to get the college football season started.</p><p>Football is the money-making engine for most college’s athletic departments and as schools, conferences and the NCAA try to find a way play this fall and get the dollars flowing, one group of stakeholders doesn’t have any meaningful say in that decision. That would be the 73,000 college football players who will be taking the most risks out on the field, in dorms and traveling from stadium to stadium so that the college athletics ecosystem can survive.</p><p>Coronavirus has exposed the failures of institutions across the country. If you have a bad unemployment system, then it will be even worse during a pandemic. If your nursing homes are flawed, they’ll be even more flawed during a pandemic.</p><p>And so it is with college football, which already has an uneasy setup as the players shoulder most of the risk and don’t get paid while coaches, athletic directors and colleges make millions of dollars. Toss coronavirus into the mix, and it becomes clear how dangerous this situation is.</p><p>There’s still so much unknown about the coronavirus and its effects. While football players are seen as strong and healthy, that doesn’t mean that they can’t have pre-existing conditions that make them more vulnerable to coronavirus. It’s also uncertain what the long-term effects are. NBA player Rudy Gobert was diagnosed with Covid-19 back in March and said this week he still hasn’t fully recovered.</p><p>In pro sports, which are also attempting to restart games during the pandemic, unions representing players are working with ownership and have a say about getting back to work. Players are also being paid, which allows them to make a reasonable risk-reward calculus.</p><p>This is not the case in college sports, where coaches, college presidents, athletic directors and conference commissioners will decide if these athletes will risk themselves on the field while enriching the universities. The NCAA pays lip-service to the idea of athletes having a say with a token student-athlete advisory committee that has no real power. The NCAA itself has guidelines for schools dealing with coronavirus, but doesn’t have authority to enforce those guidelines.</p><p>At UCLA, football players are taking matters into their own hands and demanding there is an independent health official monitors Covid-19 prevention. They don’t trust the coaches or athletic department to make decisions about their health. That sounds like a reasonable and necessary request even if the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t going on.</p><p>Football players are already back on several campuses for “voluntary” workouts. While colleges are relegating many classes to the Internet because it’s too dangerous to put kids into a lecture hall, they’re rushing to subject other students to facemask-to-facemask combat. There have already been reports of double-digit cases at Clemson, LSU and Texas, raising doubts about the feasibility of a college football season this fall.</p><p>When it comes to the chance to make money vs. protecting “student-athletes,” colleges don’t have a great track record. Just take a look at college football’s failure to deal with the legacy of brain injuries and players that have been damaged forever.</p><p>College football’s decision-makers don’t deserve any benefit of the doubt as they decide if the players will put their health at risk with the big rewards going to everyone but the players.</p>