Aaron

Is there some reason why the consolation games are played in primetime and the Championship game in afternoon? Seems to me you want the best teams and championship playing in primetime AFTER the consolation games. Very bizarre and not something I have seen before and seems counterproductive to maximizing ratings. I guess everything is so mixed up this year this is just another example of everything being opposite of normal but still strange.

I have given my thoughts on McRobbie before. He has his flaws for sure, but is better by a lot than Herbert and Brand before him. I think he has issues with being hostile towards athletics but has done a lot of good things and is a much better human being than others before him. McRobbie is a lot like David Stern and Bud Selig in that he was decent but had flaws. The question for IU is to they go out and get an Adam Silver who is even better than Stern and take another step forward or do they go out and get a Rob Manfred who is worse than Selig. Selig himself even took over for Fay Vincent who was awful. This is a big moment for IU in that they went from complete incompetence to decent in leadership under McRobbie and now they need to make sure they get an Adam Silver like person who can elevate it more and not get a Manfred who will make things worse and backslide the progress. Someone who gets athletics more as part of a university setting would be nice.

And to a larger point not trying to demean fat and obese people, but the fact that America has so many heavier people (whether playing football or not) and we consider them 'normal and in perfect health" is one of the reasons the death rate is high here compared to other countries where people are thinner overall. There are many other reasons as well for the high virus death rate in US (awful government response for one), but the fact that we consider heavier people to be in 'good health' shows how much we have accepted obesity as a normal part of society even though it is not a particularly good thing for the body.

Louisville just threw three players off the soccer team for organizing a party. I for one applaud that and think there needs to be a deeper discussion about players getting scholarships if they are going to do something that puts them at risk of not playing their season which is why they are getting free college in first place. I know if I were being paid to work from home and didn't actually do my work or did something to jeopardize my work getting done that I am being paid to do, I would stop getting paid (this scenario is hypothetical other than working at home which I am doing but seems relevant). I feel a sports scholarship is similar in a lot of ways and if the players want free education they need to do everything they can to participate in the activity/sport that is giving them their free education. Organizing parties and participating in them is going to prevent that from happening so why should universities be paying for their free education if what they are doing is jeopardizing the reason they are there for free in first place? I get we are in a pandemic and normal students party but normal students pay for their education. I know this is harsh, but to me the reality is if you get any kind of scholarship or free education (whether athletic or not) and do something to jeopardize that, you lose the scholarship. I know this is a tough issue and I am curious everyone's thoughts on if they think it is OK for athlete's to party given the circumstances this year while taking free money and scholarships that prevents them from playing sports which is reason they are there in first place? Vice versa do we just need to live with the fact that kids are kids and will party and given the tough time, colleges should still pay their education given it would be OK to party in normal times and the pandemic is not their fault? I lean towards the former but understand both arguments and was curious what everyone else thought?

I feel bad for Feeney. With that said the premises that he was in "perfect" health is not accurate and has me worried about many football players. A 325 pound lineman is absolutely more susceptible to serious side affects (obesity and being overweight is maybe the highest risk group and this includes young overweight people) and makes me worried for all the lineman on a football team and another reason why I am afraid for these players as they spread it around a team. Football players getting seriously ill like Feeney will be somewhat rare, but due to the weight of many of them compared to other sports you are absolutely going to see more bad cases for the sport compared with others which I expect few or none. Another reason why I am not sure football is a good idea and I fully expect enough overweight football players to have bad consequences that the sport will shut down. I think individual and bubble sports will do fine. Baseball it depends on the day. Football very little chance till (hopefully) a vaccine in 2021. I think they will try but enough overweight football players will get seriously ill (and maybe even a death or two but hoping for best) that it has to shut down.

I am officially convinced baseball has no idea what it is doing which is no surprise with its poor leadership. They let the Marlins play through way to many positive tests. Now any positive test it shutting games down instead of pulling from Taxi squad as was planned. Baseball needs to get a plan together or cancel season as clearly right now they have none. Shutting down every team with a positive test or two won't work and letting teams play through double digit positives won't work. Find a plan baseball. This is ridiculous.

Its not a big deal, but a very impulsive and dumb decision by Hunter to post an Instagram like that with his leg condition and Covid looming. I am guessing Archie will chew out team to be more careful with their social media posts as this was not well thought out by Hunter.

Good to see the Phillies had no positives. Shows as I said that baseball is a sports with enough social distancing between teams that it is hard to spread between teams which is key. Still not sure long term how season works but this is at least a sliver of good news.

I'll say it again. We either have to accept positives (even if its 13) and replace the players with the reserve team as was planned or cancel season. Those are the options. Bubbles help a lot but even those are not immune. We either have to treat positives as injuries and move on or not play. I am not saying playing (especially without a bubble) is a good idea because its probably not, but either accept you may have many positive tests or don't have a season. I will say everyone freaked out at first when Golf and MLS had positive tests (although slightly different circumstances) and now they seem to have figured it out and had basically none. Hopefully MLB can learn from Marlins situation, and if Phillies have no positive tests which is key, it shows baseball is a distant enough sport that even if there is an outbreak within a team it will be contained within that team and not spread to other teams when they play each other. I am optimistic the bubble sports can work. I am not sure on non-bubble sports unless multiple positives like Marlins are accepted and moved on. College sports are done until winter at least in my mind unless they do some kind of bubble which is unrealistic.

OK now Michigan St is quarantining whole football team for 14 days over 2 positive tests. As I said with IU's 6, either accept positive tests and isolate infected or cancel fall sports now. I don't know which is right, but if a positive test is going to shut things don't bother.

Indy 500 reduced from 50 to 25% and masks now mandatory after Speedway took flack for 50% and masks recommended. So now we are looking at 60-70k spread out.

I'm not disagreeing, but then don't start in first place as a few positive test on every team is inevitable. No reason to start if single digit positive tests will shut it all down as literally every school is going to have them and its a waste of everyone's time to even attempt then.

What I don't understand is why start workouts if a few positive tests are going to stop it? I don't have a good answer here or know what the right answer is, but if six positive tests is going to stop workouts no reason to start them. Either you have to accept there are going to be a decent amount of positives and isolate those who get it or don't do sports this fall (and by extension in person classes). Don't start up and then stop it with six positives as that looks extremely naive. Which way to go I don't know, but schools need to decide how many positive tests they are OK with and if its no more than six, don't bother starting as you are going to have many more than that.

Important injection to this discussion: The NCAA requires to field 18 sports to be a D1 program unless something changes. This means we can ax up to six sports and still field teams. In my opinion these ones have to be kept from both historical, facility and logistical perspective: Guys 1. Men's Basketball 2. Football 3. Baseball 4. Men's Soccer 5. Men's Swimming Girls 1. Women's Basketball 2. Volleyball 3. Softball 4. Women's Soccer 5. Women's Swimming That is 10 must keeps. That leaves 14 expendable sports and we have to keep at least eight of them to be within NCAA requirements. These are: Guys 1. Wrestling 2. Men's Cross Country 3. Men's Track and Field Indoor 4. Men's Track and Field Outdoor (yes indoor and outdoor are counted as separate sports among the 24) 5. Men's Tennis 6. Men's Golf Girls 1. Water Polo 2. Women's Cross Country 3. Women's Track and Field Indoor 4. Women's Track and Field Outdoor 5. Women's Tennis 6. Women's Golf 7. Field Hockey 8. Rowing Looking at this logically we have two more women's sports than men's sports to help offset Football and Title Nine. As much as Rowing looks out of place, it is also a great Title Nine sport with 20 scholarships which is most of any team outside Football so it is most likely safe. Field Hockey also is among the higher women's sports with 12 scholarships so as bad as the team is, not sure we can justify from a Title Nine perspective (unless things get really bad and then this is probably the second most likely sport to go for women). With the new course and Women's Golf having only six scholarships I don't see this going. Women's Tennis is one of the few all or nothing sports believe it or not, so IU cannot award partial scholarships (other sports with this rule are Football, Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball and Volleyball) so that is pretty safe with eight. Women's Track and Field awards to many scholarships again to make up for the loss from a Title Nine perspective with 18. This leaves Water Polo as the only sport I see IU can reasonably justify axing from a women's perspective. It is only eight scholarships and is the only sport the Big Ten does not sponsor (only IU and Michigan play Water Polo among Big Ten teams) and IU fields in a different conference as a result (Mountain Pacific Sports Federation as the vast majority of Water Polo teams compete out west). This is also an extremely expensive sport to field as IU is often flying out west to compete as that is where most of the teams are. If any sport is going to get chopped on the women's side it's Water Polo. From a men's perspective, scholarships are less important, other than taking at least as many away as you did from women. Assuming we chop water polo, we need to make it up by axing at least eight scholarships on the men's side. Wrestling is really bad, but it is a huge deal in the Big Ten and has new facility so unless we dump Field Hockey as well I don't see this going. Track is 12.6 scholarship's for Men, so unless we dump a second women's sport outside of Water Polo's eight, no reason to send this packing. Men's Tennis and Golf equal nine scholarships so these are probably the first men's sports to go if Water Polo is cut. In conclusion from a numbers perspective the first three cuts would probably be Water Polo on the women's side and Golf and Tennis on men's side, dropping IU of three sports and 17 scholarships putting us at 21 sports. This would leave us with nine men's sports and 12 women's sports, If things got worse, the next round of cuts would probably be Field Hockey (12) and Wrestling (9.9) which would take us to five sports axed and 18.9 scholarships for men and 20 for women which is basically equivalent and would put us at 19 sports fielded (one above NCAA minimum) with eight sports for men and eleven for women and basically in the same spot Title Nine wise. This is as far as I see IU going unless something drastic happens that no one even wants to think about.

Unless they make the Big Ten schedule double round robin instead of just a round robin like normal or move it to spring. Lot of unknowns right now.