Strike One: As you may have read in this space two weeks ago, there’s an on-going battle within the high school sports ranks that’s yet to be settled. On one side, you have a handful of bureaucrats/lawyers/administrators (reportedly from northern Colorado) who have conjured up an imaginary case for a maybe/possibly/could kinda be Title IX legal case…against the other side, which is basically all spring high school sports that have a similar sport which operates in a typical fall season (baseball v softball, boys soccer v girls’ soccer, etc.) Caught in the middle is the Colorado High School Activities Association. And predictably, it’s become a “kill the messenger” situation for them.
This whole ordeal revolves around CHSAA’s original plan to give the spring sports teams a few more games in the regular and post season than the comparable fall sports were scheduled for this school year only, due to COVID restrictions. Remember, during the previous school year, those fall sports programs – boys’ soccer, girls’ softball, etc. had a normal, full athletic season. Didn’t miss a game (softball played 23 games and full play-off slate.) And we all know what happened the following spring. There were zero baseball, girls’ soccer or anything else games.
Now these bureaucrats – and not the softball community or anyone else actually in sports – are fussing about “equity” concerns for this singular school year. It’s a “legal” stance that has zero merit.
CHSAA is still trying to navigate its way out of this mess. Trying to appease both sides is never an easy task. Sitting on the fence, as they are currently doing, is their safe place. CHSAA’s baseball committee will meet on Monday afternoon to discuss it. The feeling is that they will relent and give baseball (and other sports) back the two games they planned to drop back in March. As for the fate of the play-off brackets…that’s still TBD.
Common sense would tell you that eventually, CHSAA will have to return to its original plan of allowing the spring sports their additional games. The bureaucrats have no legitimate case. That doesn’t mean this CYA approach to running the spring sports season won’t continue.
Two things have happened in the last two weeks. First, an attorney for the baseball coaches association blew huge holes in the bureaucrats Title IX argument. In a three-page letter to CHSAA, the representative for the Colorado Dugout Club Coaches Association wrote, “To try to justify your decision (to shorten the baseball season to mirror softball) under a veiled reference to Title IX considerations is to wrongfully weaponize it in a way that was never intended, and is to misunderstand and misapply it, and to use as a means to harm the very people it was intended to help.”
Secondly, Governor Jared Polis came out publicly and strongly supported the spring sports coaches, decrying the use of Title IX to shrink the season.
“Like most Coloradans, I firmly support the goals of Title IX and have championed equal opportunity in sports for my entire career.” Polis wrote in a statement. “Title IX was not meant, however, to penalize young athletes who haven’t been able to complete full seasons because of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. The goal of ‘make up seasons’ here is clearly to compensate for missed opportunities last year, not to create disparities among student athletes. Players who had to sit out seasons or miss games last year deserve the chance to make up for lost time, and Title IX should not be used as an excuse for arbitrarily shortening certain seasons because of external events such as rainouts, floods, fires, or a once-in-a-century pandemic.”
Other media outlets followed up what was written here and sent out by others, including a large number of parents and coaches. Public sentiment is almost 100% in favor of the spring sports. IT would seem like CHSAA will eventually have to find a way to do the right thing…but you never know.
The motivation of the bureaucrats is apparently this simple: Don’t allow anything that could upset the status quo and trigger a full scale investigation into how districts or schools are handling Title IX compliance. They don’t want to have to open up their records – which IS a lot of extra work – and prove they’ve been compliant all along.
You could say, as has been mentioned, that some administrators simply don’t want to extend the school sports calendar. “They don’t want to work” as one talk show caller surmised. There are also some who wonder if perhaps a few of the school admin folks who are siding with the bureaucrats are fearful that any kind of Title IX investigation might uncover legitimate inequities within their programs – the kind that don’t involve just the number of games played. If that’s the case, then perhaps a summer that features a full Title IX investigation might be a good idea. If you’re trying to shortchange spring sports student-athletes so you can keep your own Title IX failures a secret, then you deserve whatever punishment that could come your way.
Meanwhile, the spring sports athletes deserve to play their extra games.
Strike Two: Of course, all this stuff is the by-product of dealing with a world-wide pandemic. No one was prepared for it, not at the high school, college or professional level.
However, after more than a year, and after the worlds smartest scientists developed a vaccine in record time, why are we still having athletic contests at any level disrupted by positive COVID tests?
No, the pandemic isn’t over. But now that everyone over the age of 16 is eligible to get a free COVID vaccine, why haven’t all the high school, college and professional athletes been vaccinated yet? This is how we are going to end the pandemic, right? By vaccination?
This one is just as big a head scratcher as the bureaucrats imaginary Title IX case.
Spring high school sports athletes are still going to be required to wear masks during competition in some venues (although a more common sense approach – which means things like allowing players out on a baseball field who are no closer than 75 feet apart during game action to not be masked up – will be the norm) and when they’re in close quarters (like a dugout.) But what if all the participants had been vaccinated? There are still two weeks until the spring sports season begins. There’s more than enough time to get every high school spring sports athlete vaccinated. Then no masks will be needed during competition.
How does a college basketball team – Virginia Commonwealth – miss out on playing in March Madness a year after the tourney was cancelled – when a vaccine was available beforehand? Get your shots so you can take some shots, right?
The Washington Nationals had their Opening Day postponed due to a positive COVID test. How is this even possible in April of 2021? How come that entire organization, from top to bottom, didn’t get vaccinated during spring training? What is the legitimate reason for that not happening?
Rumor is that some organizations and members of the MLB Player Association were worried about possible backlash in the court of public opinion if athletes were moved to the front of the line. When you make fear-based decisions, you get an Opening Day postponed.
I’m told that better than 85% of the Colorado Rockies roster has been vaccinated to date. That’s good…but not good enough. There are still some short-sighted members of the team who are fearful of a potential bad reaction. Shortsighted and a bit selfish, actually.
How does the entire Vancouver Canucks season get ruined by a 2020-style outbreak within the team in March of 2021, three months after a vaccine first became available?
That totally could have been prevented. Who’s in charge of these decisions?
Yes, as the baseball people feared, there are lots of people who don’t think athletes should get or have gotten preferential treatment or bumped to the front of the vaccine line. That reaction is incredibly short sighted. Just think of all the people whose livelihood depends on those games being played. Its not just about the athletes. It’s about the collective good. Vendors, arena workers, parking lot attendants. Everyone who missed out on working at games last year should be able to work without interruption the rest of this year because we have the ability to “vaccinate ourselves out” of this pandemic now. Think about the arena workers in Vancouver.
That argument against vaccinating athletes first is moot now, with everyone over the age of 16 eligible regardless. And there is plenty of vaccine to go around. Now it’s just a case of athletes doing the responsible thing and getting their shot(s). It’s not just for you, it’s for your teammates and fans, too.
Strike Three: We’ve reached the point where we’re starting to talk about playing games in full stadiums again. Will those full stadiums include traveling media?
Play-by-play guys have sort of gotten used to doing games from their home venues over the past year while watching on a big screen TV. To their immense credit, if you didn’t know – and they didn’t remind you during the broadcasts – that they weren’t in the visiting press box, you might not even notice. They’ve gotten that good at it.
We are seeing a little more “on-site” post-game interviews, etc. now, but interviewer and interviewee remain at least 12 feet apart it appears. There are no “up close and personal” interviews. Most post-game interviews are still done via zoom (and who among us isn’t “Zoomed-out” by now?) Players are good with it…media not so much.
There are rumblings that “in-person” interviews are being considered again, which would be great for everyone involved (except the athletes I’d imagine) who wants more than “coach speak” responses.
Are there some things that have become the new norm over the past year that could become permanent post-COVID?
The media stuff would seem to be the most likely, since it’s gone so smoothly in most cases and saves on travel costs. Things like social distancing during interviews, even if they’re in-person, will probably continue. Maybe in the future media folks will need to show their vaccine card in order to gain access to locker rooms?
It’s fair to wonder when baseball managers will be allowed to exchange line-up cards at home plate again – or since that pre-game ritual has proven to be unnecessary now that they can exchange info via electronic messaging – if they might do away with it forever? It’s going to be hard to have a home plate meeting with an electronic ump in the future anyway, right?
There were fewer college football bowl games in 2020. Did anyone miss those that weren’t played? How many will come back in 2021?
What about “bubbles?” The NBA and NHL bubbles in 2020 were successful, and so was baseball’s World Series sort of bubble…at least until Justin Turner went rogue after Game Seven. This year, aside from VCU’s COVID-forced forfeit, March Madness all in one location was a success, too.
In a lot of cases, we’ve discovered that less in more in sports. We very well might see more of that less continue.