1. Most Intriguing Battle in NCAA History by Pat Forde, Sports Illustrated "At 9 a.m. on what would be an unprecedented day in college football’s baroque, bewildering and bellicose history, a text dropped in from a TV executive who was watching the tumult unfold:
“It’s athletic directors, coaches and players vs. presidents, trustees and lawyers in the most intriguing battle in NCAA history.”
It was the perfect summation of the underlying tension of this Summer of COVID-19.
At that point, nobody was sure who was going to win that epic confrontation. By the end of the day, it was a split decision. Presidents, trustees and lawyers scored two early victories in the Big Ten and Pac-12; athletic directors, coaches and players got an apparent late win in the Big 12."
>> Situational Awareness: "But for those pressing forward to play, heed one warning: The lawyers will be circling. Not the ones counseling conferences to avoid trifling with players’ health, but the ones who will be doing the suing if, God forbid, a player dies, has long-term damage or career-threatening complications."
>> What They're Saying: "Whatever conference(s) decides to play football this fall will be taking a ridiculously high risk they may soon regret. I know and have talked with some of the best plaintiff’s lawyers in the country this week, and they’re praying the SEC, Big 12 and/or the ACC are greedy enough to stay the course. If things go sideways, the plaintiff’s Bar will immediately get their hands on the internal financial analyses of the schools (a FOIA layup), get the conference financials through the discovery process, and then just stand in front of the jurors and point to the conferences that decided not to risk the health of their student-athletes. Good Lord, I’d hate to be the lawyers defending those cases.” - Tom Mars, sports attorney
>> Reality Check: And the attorneys lining up to represent plaintiffs? “These are lawyers who’ve already slain bigger dragons than the SEC, and they can afford to finance the most expensive litigation on the planet. As a coalition, they’d be the legal equivalent of the Death Star.”
>> The Final Word: "The university presidents, who are tasked with thinking about the greater good of an entire campus, did something they rarely do—they said no to big-time athletics. Did they want to? Of course not. It’s unpopular, and it exposes their athletic departments to massive financial hardship. But they made the hard, proper call in the midst of a pandemic that remains difficult to understand and harder to predict."
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