OPINION

BILL PLASCHKE: Campus safe for athletes, not students?

LOS ANGELES -- The band room is silent. The biology labs are shuttered. The library is locked.

But hey, football players, come on in!

Classes are on laptops. Seminars are webinars. Graduation ceremonies are on Zoom.

But hey, football players, you better show up!

After two months of being closed during the coronavirus pandemic, despite risks that still are keeping some entire cities shut down, giant universities everywhere have decided to crack open one of their doors.

Not surprisingly, it is the door that leads to the money.

Last week, the NCAA decided to allow voluntary on-campus workouts for all Division I sports beginning June 1 -- and some University of Arkansas athletes can return starting June 8. On Tuesday, the Pac-12 Conference joined the national party by announcing it would allow those workouts to begin as soon as June 15.

While the timing of every Power 5 school's reopening is yet unknown, one thing is clear: Rarely has the term "student-athlete" been such an insultingly ridiculous illusion.

While the students are ordered to stay home, the athletes are being essentially ordered to go back to work? It's not yet safe for the student body president, but it's totally safe for the quarterback? It's too risky to sit in a classroom, but cool to hang out in a weight room?

The workout facilities soon will be open to athletes in all sports -- midfielders and third basemen and sprinters alike -- but the decision is obviously based on one sport only.

It's all about football. A Power 5 school's economic structure desperately requires a football season, and, for that, they desperately need in-shape players.

Sack the risks. Block the unknowns. Blitz common sense.

"If you cancel the football season, the entire business model of most athletic departments would crumble," said Paul Swangard, marketing consultant and longtime instructor of sports brand strategy at the University of Oregon. "Everyone knew the issues that come with being so reliant on such a cash cow, but nobody had a scenario in which it goes away. So now everyone is trying to get it back."

Studies have shown that football at most Division I schools earns more revenue than the other sports combined. In some places, the football program accounts for more than 70% of an athletic department's revenue.

According to a Washington University report commissioned by ESPN, each of the 65 Power 5 schools will lose an average of $62 million in football revenue if there is no season. That figure covers everything from tickets to television rights. That's a lot of money being generated by essentially unpaid labor, and so it is not surprising that officials will say anything to get those kids back to work.

Larry Scott, the Pac-12 commissioner whose misguided leadership has turned the conference into a national punchline, actually posited that the players would be safer on campus than at home.

During a recent interview on CNN, Scott said, "In most cases, we feel that student-athletes will be in a safer position and a healthier position if they can have access to the world-class medical care, supervision and support that they can get on their campuses."

Really? If sheltering on campus was safer, then why weren't we all quarantining on campuses? Why were the dorms emptied instead of filled? Why has your college-age child spent the past two months on your couch instead of the quad?

Granted, the schools aren't bringing back the athletes to ramshackle locker rooms and dungeon gyms. The workout facilities are often multimillion-dollar palaces, albeit built on the backs of that unpaid labor.

"If you walk into a modern Power 5 conference facility, it's like sending your kid to an Olympic training center," Swangard said. "Having them train there is a lot safer than doing a workout at a gym down the street."

On the other hand, why subject athletes to risks that you wouldn't demand of regular students? Either the campuses are open or they're not. Either it's safe for everyone or no one.

Bottom line, when it comes to the frantic quest to restart the money machine that is football, the athletes shouldn't trust they will be afforded the same protection as the students.

Sports on 05/29/2020

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