NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- From small-town Ohio kid to Louisiana Legend, Joe Burrow capped his record-breaking, Heisman-winning season by bringing a national championship to LSU. Burrow threw five touchdown passes, ran for another score and finished off one of the most accomplished seasons in college football history by leading the top-ranked Tigers to a 42-25 victory against No. 3 Clemson on Monday night in the playoff final. "He's one of the greatest players in LSU history," Tigers coach Ed Orgeron said of Burrow. "He's done so much for the state of Louisiana and LSU. We are so grateful to Joe Burrow." The senior quarterback from The Plains, Ohio, lead the Tigers (15-0) to their first national title since 2007 and fourth overall, breaking a few more records along the way in what was already an historic season. The five TD passes and 463 yards passing are the most for a BCS or College Football Playoff title game as are his six total touchdowns.
Mark Dantonio steps down at Michigan State There’s big news in the college football world on Tuesday and there could be some ripple effects felt in the NFL. Mark Dantonio announced that he is stepping down as the head coach at Michigan State. Dantonio took over the program in 2007 and went 115-57 over his 13 years on the job. There’s no word on who might be in the mix to replace Dantonio and it’s certainly possible that they could have an NFL assistant or two on their list of coaches they’d like to talk to about the opening. A quick glance at coaches who could conceivably fit the bill shows that 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh started his coaching career at Michigan State, but there’s no sign that anyone is thinking about a return to East Lansing. Any hiring will be followed by other staffing moves that will lead to some spinning of the coaching carousel, however, and that could wind up impacting someone in the league before it comes to a stop. NBC
NCAA moves toward letting players make money With no professional developmental league, the NFL continues to rely on college football to serve as its farm system. And the NFL’s free farm system continues to exploit its athletes, failing to give them fair compensation for their skills, abilities, efforts, and sacrifices. Yes, they get something. But the wholesale value of “an education” for all college football players under scholarship pales in comparison to the cash they collectively generate. Everyone knows that by now, even the most ardent student-athlete-truthers who otherwise defend a system that pays everyone connected to the sport except the young men who play the games. It’s become essentially a given for the past several years, and the overriding goal for the NCAA has become delaying the reckoning as long as possible. The latest strategy for delaying the reckoning comes from a formal effort to move toward allowing players to earn compensation for their names, images, and likenesses. There will be rules and regulations and limitations and exceptions, but the end result — if the recommendation of the NCAA’s Board of Governors becomes adopted — will be for the first time ever an opportunity for college football players to get a little something more than room, board, tuition, books, and snacks. The NCAA isn’t doing this out of the goodness of its heart, assuming (ass, you, me) that it has one. The NCAA is trying to keep the wolves of fairness and equity at bay, and its hand was forced by efforts in several states to pass laws permitting student-athletes to also become entrepreneurs, with the commodity being their own personal brand. Whether this will be enough to slow down efforts to get college athletes paid remains to be seen. The NCAA and its members will try to delay the reckoning indefinitely, primarily because no one wants to re-balance budgets that would include a major line item for labor costs. It would make it harder to build lavish facilities, to subsidize sports that generate little or no revenue, and perhaps most importantly to keep the people balancing the budgets compensated at the levels to which they’ve become accustomed. That’s ultimately what this is about. For decades, colleges have enjoyed the benefit of a bargain that gives little to athletes who create much. Even if the objective at this point is to keep the current system in place for as long as possible, every year that the current system lasts is another windfall that can be distributed to anyone and everyone but the players. College administrators will face a cold, hard reality whenever the model changes; for now, the ideal approach for each of them is to do whatever must be done to keep it from changing until after they’ve retired. NBC
Mark Emmert: NCAA will not have fall sports if no students are on campus Fans have been wondering whether there will be college football played in the fall. While we don’t know that answer yet, we do know that schools are unlikely to have sports if students aren’t on campus first. That’s what Mark Emmert says. Emmert, the NCAA president, had a conversation about the future of college sports in the coronavirus environment. A video of the conversation was posted on the NCAA’s Twitter account. The main takeaway is that Emmert says there won’t be fall sports if students aren’t allowed on campus. Emmert said: “College athletes are college students, and you can’t have college sports if you don’t have college (campuses) open and having students on them. You don’t want to ever put student-athletes at greater risk than the rest of the student body. “That doesn’t mean [the school] has to be up and running in the full normal model, but you have to treat the health and well-being of the athletes at least as much as the regular students. … If a school doesn’t reopen, then they’re not going to be playing sports. It’s really that simple.” Emmert says that contact tracing and testing must be improved and much more readily available in order for schools to be open and sports to take place. He indicated that schools would likely have to make a decision on what will happen for the fall within the next month or so. There is also a possibility of fans being able to attend events so long as they follow the rules in place in their respective areas. And since different schools may have different policies, that could result in unbalanced athletic schedules, with some programs playing more or less than others. There is so much uncertain currently, but there is one thing we do now: The NCAA says it is not going to put student-athletes at any more risk than what non-athletes experience. (YardBarker)
This image was taken during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic at a Georgia Tech football game. It remains to be seen if we will see a reasonable facsimile of NCAA football this fall. The President of the University of Michigan has already stated that if students are not in on-campus classes, there will be no football in Ann Arbor. It appears a lot of California universities are taking the same stance. The good news is that it appears that the majority of the "Power 5" universities are proceeding as if there will be some form of a 2020 season.
I appreciate this picture. We know infinitely more about illnesses and how to prevent their spread than we did then, and we still have huge portions of the country refusing to follow that knowledge, and voluntarily gather in large groups anyway. This is with the hindsight of knowing how the Spanish Flu turned out... Also, note that there are zero people in that picture without a mask on. And yet, in the USA at the moment, it's almost impossible to find a picture of people in any number without seeing several people unmasked. Events are being cancelled now strictly because we now know better, and those in charge are trying to do what's right for a populace that clearly isn't interested in doing the same. Crazy, how we can be a hundred years and leaps of knowledge further ahead, and yet actually behind in several ways... I hope everyone's happy and healthy.
I'm personally doing everything in my power to stay healthy. My age (72), combined with pre-existing cardiovascular (5 stents) and respiratory issues (COPD), puts me smack dab in the middle of the Covid-19 sweet spot. I personally have a hard time breathing while wearing a mask. As a result, I pick and chose when to venture out and, even then, I plan any and all trips to a retail store in advance to minimize the time I'm in a given store. By that, I mean I check the story's inventory of a particular item and it's location before actually going to the store. Even then, if the traffic in a store is light, I may go sans mask until I get to more populated areas in the store. My life's habit of being a "buyer" not a "shopper" is finally paying dividends.
If half as many people in this country put that much thought into their living right now, we'd all be better off. I'm glad you're doing as well as can be, right now, and I damn sure hope you make it through this without so much as an extra cough. I'm also at high risk, and very thankful I have a partner who has done most of the venturing for me, and been really diligent about cross-contamination. Living in the middle of Florida, heaven knows we're surrounded by plenty of people who don't care. Plenty of people who would've laughed at the folks in that picture and asked them what they were so scared of...
Report: Big 10 to shift to conference-only schedule The Ivy League might not become the same kind of bellwether for football as it was for basketball, but other conferences are already beginning to adjust their plans for the fall. According to Nicole Auerbach of TheAthletic.com, the Big 10 will adopt a conference-only schedule for the fall. Coming the day after the Ivy League canceled all fall sports, it’s an ominous sign for college football, whether fans might be involved or not. While many of those games are against smaller schools, there were some interesting matchups including Ohio State playing at Oregon. it could have an indirect impact on the NFL. The Packers were scheduled to play the second game in a three-day span in October, when they host the Falcons on Monday Night Football. Wisconsin and Notre Dame were schedule to play the Saturday before at Lambeau Field, which would have created a field condition issue. NBC
Got a text indicating more than sports cancellations for more than one major college so I’m not sure what to expect next. Stanford was mentioned as a possibility for a frontline school that may decline student access to the campus.
