–Here is a perfect example of why all sports should have gone on hiatus this season. Keyontae Johnson, Florida’s basketball star and the SEC preseason pick for player of the year, contracted COVID-19 last summer and collapsed on the floor during a game with Florida State on Dec. 12. Subsequently he was hospitalized and placed in a medically induced coma until he began breathing on his own. His family said he was released from the hospital last Tuesday and would spend Christmas with his family. But according to the Gainesville Sun, which based its report on information from someone with firsthand knowledge of the matter, Keyontae has been diagnosed with acute myocarditis. This inflammation of the heart muscle has been linked to some patients who had COVID-19, but the Sun had not confirmed that Keyontae’s case was a side-effect from the virus. However, the Florida star will miss at least several months of the season or perhaps the whole thing. Florida already has canceled one of its tournaments because of the virus. Is it really worth putting student-athletes in harm’s way just to play a game? I seriously doubt it.
–I have been a fan of Ohio State football for more years than I care to remember, and I’ve always been aware that those who aren’t members of the OSU fan base pretty much universally harbor considerable ill will (euphemistically speaking) toward the Buckeyes. Some of this I attribute to the natural enmity felt toward a team that’s highly successful most of the time. (That’s why I always cheer for any and all teams playing either Alabama and Clemson. And if they are playing each other, I hope for a scoreless tie.) But what happened this season offers those fans not in the Buckeyes’ camp plenty of fuel for their incendiary dislike of Ohio State. Way back at the beginning of the season, the bigwigs in the Big Ten Conference decided to cancel the season because of the onset of the COVID-19 virus. At the time I applauded this decision for keeping the football players safe from the virus. When the PAC-10 followed suit, I erroneously thought all other colleges and universities would fall into line, but I was wrong. No sooner had other colleges begun playing football than the Ohio State fans and players began pressuring the top brass to reverse the no-play decision. At first the Big Ten stayed strong, but soon the opposing forces proved too overwhelming, and the commissioner and athletics directors consented to an eight-game season in which teams were required to play at least six games to qualify for championship competition. So what happened? Northwestern won the western conference with a 6-1 record, but Ohio State prevailed in the eastern conference with a record of 5-0. Uh-oh! The Buckeyes were able to play only five games because of three covid-caused cancelations. So what does the conference do? IT CHANGES THE REQUIREMENT FROM SIX GAMES TO FIVE SO OHIO STATE CAN PLAY IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME! Despite missing 22 players from their roster, the Buckeyes won the Big Ten and earned a spot in the college playoffs versus Clemson on New Year’s Day. But wait! Some of Ohio State’s best players are under a mandatory 21-day quarantine and will miss the Clemson game. No. We can’t have that! Time for another rule change. YEP! THAT’S WHAT THEY DID AND DROPPED THE QUARANTINE TIME FROM 21 DAYS TO 17. Yes, I’ll watch the game and hope that Ohio State wins. But I can understand the outrage and bad feelings caused by such seemingly flagrant favoritism. Or was it? Would the rules have been changed if a different team were involved? I sincerely hope so. But here’s the bottom line. There should be no issue because the games should not have been played in the first place. During the season 139 games were canceled or postponed, and at this writing, 16 bowl games have been canceled so far, and more than 18 schools have opted out of bowls. These include Virginia Tech, Florida State, Boston College, USC, and Stanford. This definitely is a football season that never should have happened!
–Well, Christmas 2020 has come and gone, and now we can turn our attention to welcoming in 2021. Usually when you reflect about the outgoing year, you think about fond memories, but 2020 will be a year filled with things worth forgetting. Of course the major event in 2020 was the invasion of COVID–19, which at this writing had claimed the lives of 1,756,064 people worldwide and 337,961 in the United States alone. As scientists all over the world frantically worked to develop a vaccine, political and social unrest ran rampant, and in the United States the politicians typically argued, disagreed, and squabbled while accomplishing very little. Of course it didn’t help matters that POTUS decided to go to Florida and play golf while leaving important matters in Washington hanging. Despite the plethora of deaths and infections brought on by the Coronavirus, there was a bright spot in 2020. Predictably the scientists triumphed and came up with some vaccine to combat the virus, and the rollout began near the end of the year. The massive inoculation will continue into 2021 until the raging pandemic is finally (we hope) under control. With the exception of the vaccine’s development, memories of 2020 will mostly be unpleasant. It was a year filled with illness and death, canceled plans and events, business and school closings, virtual learning, civil unrest, police brutality, and a massive dose of anxiety about the future. But throughout history, people have been asked to demonstrate their strength again and again, and in the end they always seem to come through. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner said, “I believe man will not merely endure: he will prevail.” These are good words to remember as we move past 2020 and into 2021. Goodbye and good riddance to 2020. Hello and welcome to 2021. Let’s get busy prevailing. Happy New Year!
—Ponder This: “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.” ~Steve Martin
