College Sports vs. Professional Sports Returning
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SportsTranscript
00:00 The NBA and MLB are on their way back and the NFL seems to be handling things business
00:05 as usual.
00:06 But what about college sports, in particular college football?
00:10 For more on that, I'm joined by Chantel Powell of Gamecock Digest and Glenn West of LSU Country.
00:15 And Chantel, let me start with you.
00:17 You know, we know in the pros we're talking about highly compensated athletes and professionals,
00:22 but at the college level, these big programs are injecting a lot of money into the economy,
00:27 the local economies that is, but the players aren't seeing it.
00:30 Should there be a different standard applied to the return of college sports?
00:33 Yeah, and I think it should be more so to protect the college athletes because as you
00:38 said, they have more at risk.
00:39 You know, in the pros, you can opt to sit out and you might take a financial hit, but
00:43 if you're a veteran and in, you know, a deeper contract and have already made your money,
00:49 it's not going to be as significant to sit out one season for you in order to protect
00:52 your family.
00:53 So with college athletics, they don't really have that choice.
00:57 And I haven't heard, you know, any college athletes voice their concerns about the safety
01:04 surrounding the comebacks.
01:05 But these are young athletes who are also at the same point in time trying to fight
01:09 for social justice in many instances.
01:12 So it's just a lot of things going on at once for them.
01:15 And on top of that, you know, when you have like the bubble in different sports and trying
01:20 to keep people contained, that isn't really fair to college athletes because I haven't
01:26 heard them try to do that.
01:28 So now you're basically telling a bunch of college age kids they can't enjoy their college
01:32 experience and it's purely for the sake of making money for a sport that's not going
01:38 to pay dividends until unless they go pro.
01:40 Yeah, and you talked about the power structure there.
01:43 Now we've seen that challenged a little bit at Oklahoma State and Mississippi.
01:47 Now when it comes to LSU, you're talking about the defending champs, Glenn.
01:50 They've actually had to quarantine about 30 players because of either the coronavirus
01:54 or exposure to the coronavirus.
01:56 How is a program like that handling it and approaching some of these topics we just discussed?
02:00 Yeah, I mean, they're approaching it exactly the way that they should be.
02:05 I mean, you know, I think most of these players by now, the ones that have initially tested
02:10 positive are probably back with the team.
02:13 This was something that was done, you know, pretty much when they first got back in early
02:16 June.
02:17 But, you know, I go back to what Chantel said and, you know, I think with college there
02:24 is that bubble factor that you just can't take into effect like you can with most professional
02:29 sports.
02:30 You know, it's literally impossible to ask, you know, college kids to, you know, kind
02:36 of quarantine themselves because they're going to be walking around campus with, you know,
02:39 30,000 of their peers going to class and things of that nature.
02:43 So it's certainly a question I think we're going to have to table really until we kind
02:48 of see the return of these college students and just seeing kind of how they interact
02:54 with the college athletes.
02:55 I think you're going to have to obviously start with requesting that your players wear
03:00 masks.
03:01 I think that's going to be a huge component to this.
03:03 And, you know, we'll see kind of, you know, how the cases balance out, if any, once school
03:08 opens back up.
03:09 But I think that's going to be a huge, huge hurdle that the college ranks are going to
03:14 have to answer here in the next couple of weeks and months.
03:17 And we don't know how the schools are going to approach the students returning versus
03:19 the student athletes returning and all that.
03:21 So there is all the unknown up in the air.
03:24 And that's why I think it may bring into focus this conversation we've been having a long
03:28 time about the current structure of college sports.
03:32 Chantel, Glenn, appreciate your time and insight on this matter.
03:36 Thanks.
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