(05-02-2020 07:17 AM)Soobahk40050 Wrote: Interesting question, but probably unrealistic. It makes sense that different conferences can do different things. The SEC states are predominantly states with lower population density that should be able to open sooner. However, schools like Florida in a higher population state and Vandy in a high population city (yes, Knoxville is big too) would have a harder time being ready.
Maybe a 8-10 team SEC with ready schools makes more sense.
Unrealistic how? The question is can a conference commissioner order a state school funded by taxpayers, appropriated by the State legislature, to lose revenue which in the SEC would be 132 million average per year per school? I don't think legally they can. And can a school which pledges its services to a contract be held to that contract when ordered by an entity not to comply on a random year of the remaining contract and which comes at tremendous expense to the school for which said conference will not compensate them, nor the contracted party (the network) remunerate them?
This is hardly a shaky set of questions and when the losses are in the 100 plus million range certainly worth the attorney's fees.
This may be the perfect setting for schools to move if their contract is not being fulfilled.
Now because a bunch of limp noodle academic administrators don't like making controversial decisions and long ago leaned to do nothing when faced with a real crisis it is probable that the presidents at Florida State and Clemson will simply do nothing. But anyone with a legal mind knows that this is uncharted waters which are easily worth testing. I seriously doubt any event cancellation insurance can come remotely close to reimbursing a season.
So if your cross state rival is playing football and earning money which will keep hundreds employed while your school is sucking up the loss and will be sorely disadvantaged moving forward, then please carefully explain to me why they have no legal remedy for the damages of a bureaucrats decision telling them they can't play?
At the very least Clemson and Florida State should seek an injunction to play football with the SEC for the 2020-1 season since obviously some of the non conference schedule will be open due to schools not playing.
Social distancing and crowd size is another matter. What Sankey is pondering here are his current TV contracts and the fact that anyone who plays football this fall will be adopted very positively by the American football viewer who otherwise is feeling very hopeless and put upon.
The worst is yet to come. Even if the worst of this pandemic is over, which it isn't as a full resurgence is expected when Fall hits, the economic cascade has not yet begun. Job losses are going to be protracted in recovery. Economic pain is going to be severe, and before it is over crime motivated by need is going to be prevalent. The economic damage to the First Quarter of the year isn't gong to be fully felt until the 4th Quarter and that's because of how finances work and because of how the need of so many is going to outweigh most economic safety nets which presently are keeping individuals' heads above water.
Football will be the great distraction from economic pain by the Fall. And because our idiot politicians took bribes from big business to locate in China for cheap labor and because one large chunk of that was Big Pharma then the shortages of maintenance drugs many need to stave off heart attack and stroke, or diabetics need to maintain blood sugar levels, or those suffering from the chronic nerve pain of trauma injury need to function daily are going to be tied up in trade and reparations disputes with China.
I have one CMO who is a dear friend who called to warn me about my blood pressure meds being in short supply by the 4th Quarter. The bad thing is the way insurance is set up I can't buy resupply until there is less than a week worth of pills remaining.
Young people have not one clue what kind of crap is going to hit the fan late this year because of what has happened from March through June.
So I say all of this to make this point about a much less serious matter, but real damages have been created not only by the virus but by those making decisions pertaining to our lives because of it, and some of those decisions were politically motivated.
The Chinese, a their war college in Beijing, have been plotting an event to take the economies of Western Europe and the U.S. since the early '90's. It was a 5 part plan the first step of which was to entice wealthy American companies to build up their infrastructure by getting them to build factories in China in exchange for cheap labor. The second part of that plan was to use a trade imbalance to drive up U.S. debt and give China some leverage by holding it through the purchase of Treasury bonds. The third part was to create an infrastructure dependency of the U.S. upon China for all kinds of goods necessary for the conduct of normal life (pharmaceuticals, materials required in construction, parts necessary for military machine repair, etc). Step 4 which is where we are now was to create a Black Swan event that would tank the economies, create job loss, and then for China to use its ability for resupply to either drive the American debt higher, or to use crumbling infrastructure and high American debt as an excuse to push to replace the American dollar as the world reserve currency with the renminbi which when backed by 10% gold which China has been buying in quantity since the 90's would make China the center of world trade and therefore the preeminent military power. Step 5 use China's military strength to genocide all races other than Chinese including the genocide of all non pure Chinese.
You see they adopted Nazi Germany's racial purity codes in the 60's under Mao. China is far more fascist than they are communist and human rights don't mean a damned thing to them.
And for the record they haven't fired all of their economic shots at us yet. The could trigger another massive stock sell off if they nationalize the corporate factories that located in China thereby depriving the companies that built them of physical assets, and of product, and by then competing with those companies by using their confiscated plants against them to make even cheaper competitive product.
So the world of hurt coming down on all of us is dangling from a rapidly fraying rope which is keeping it from crashing upon our heads at the moment, but that rope isn't going to hold.
The sooner we get back to a normal business the less destructive it will be. And sport no matter what any national leaders will say publicly none of this was a damned accident. Accidents don't happen when the spread of a virus is covered for 60 days in a period in history where international air travel happens multiple times a day. The accidental release mantra is nothing more than a cover and the virus was manipulated because scientists can't explain the bond in its structure which combined 2 different corona viruses.
So at stake for Clemson and Florida State or any school out there isn't just the playing of a damned football game, but rather the ability of students to pay tuition in the midst of what might likely be another great depression, and the ability of a state legislature stripped of tax based revenue to fund the salaries of administration and staff at those schools, and of their greatest advertising arm, athletics, to be able to even be seen on the tube to spur the interest of the young to attend their campuses, and not lost in all of this has been the ease with which some, not all, of a college education can be had online without visiting or participating in campus life whatsoever.
So when institutes are faced with possible annihilation you better damn well believe that any such remedy is not only realistic, but likely essential.