As we know covid-19 has changed our lives completely, forcing us to scramble for and cling onto anything that can get us back to normal, or at least make us feel that way. One of those things are the re-emergence of college football or in better terms, sports in general. We seen sports everywhere before the pandemic hit and was just a normal part of life. In the earlier months of the pandemic it was clear that it was a threat to all sports and a big question that was asked was whether or not they will be back this coming season.
At first, many states were set on not allowing their sports programs to participate this coming season in order to reduce the risk of catching the virus from other players on the opposing teams and even the same team. Throughout the months, covid made things complicated because when it seemed as if we were getting better, cases would just spike up again making this a continuous cycle throughout the months. With the constant uncertainty, many people were sure sports were not going to be around this season but that was not the case. The real question now is why did sports come back even though we’re in the middle of a pandemic?
To be honest it has a lot to do with organizations/ universities losing tons of money! Sports programs are what bring in money for the universities at all levels, whether it be a smaller division three school or the big division one schools, sports programs rake in a good amount for them. The sport that brings in the most amount of money is football, which totally makes sense as to why they decided to bring it back after the constant back and forth battle of cancelling it for this year. An example of this would be the University of Alabama, who’s football program brought in 77 million dollars in revenue.That is a lot of money to lose! It seems to be like this across the country since the University of Washington (who is apart of the PAC-12) has decided to have a seven game season instead of cancelling like they originally planned. I guess the other question is whether or not this season is even worth playing?