On the week of Aug. 11, 2020, the 2020 college football season nearly ended long before the first ball was due to be snapped. First the Pac 12 claimed that the risks of the pandemic were too great for football to proceed. Soon after, the Big 10 followed suit. The Big 12 nearly did the same, which surely would have been the final nail in the coffin of the 2020 college football season.
Instead, on the heels of the SEC and ACC doubling down on their intention to play, the Big 12 found legitimation for a season and came back from the brink. College football was saved. Before long, even the Big 10 and then Pac 12 would join them, and thanks to those efforts, a national champion will, incredibly, be crowned on Monday.
The only thing is that this isn't actually the chronicle of perseverance, courage, and redemption it sets up to be. Instead, it is a tale of avarice, exploitation, and, above all, far too much harm. “We are putting ourselves through shit so white people can be entertained. It’s all fucking corrupt,” an SEC player told us of this college football season. That is the true story of college football in 2020 and we can’t, and shouldn’t, overlook it.
For this piece, we talked to a renowned virologist and seven players representing four of the Power Five conferences, including one involved in the College Football Playoff and another who opted out of the season, about what they went through this year. Each player has been granted anonymity for fear of reprisal from their teams and to protect the future of their careers.
Their accounts offer a window into the reality of what this cash-grab campaign was really like for the players who worked to make it possible and, equally critically, how it is essential that we understand the exploitation that has occurred as a form of structural racism—or more specifically of what Cedric J. Robinson famously called racial capitalism: a system built to intentionally steal wealth from young, predominantly Black, communities.
Despite comprising 13 percent of the U.S. population, only 2.5 percent of the student body at Power Five schools were Black as of 2014-2015. And yet Black players accounted for more than half—56.3 percent—of the rosters of Power Five football teams. What these numbers tell us is that the hardship experienced in the realm of big time college football towards the end of generating revenue for universities and their athletic departments is a fundamentally racialized form of harm, part of what Dr. Billy Hawkins has referred to as the new plantation. This is something players understand all too well, although they are not afforded the freedom to openly discuss it.
What we have seen during this college football season is the worst of racial capitalism, a conspicuous and transparent attempt to steal wealth from Black communities in the midst of a pandemic that has already taken so much from them. Dr. Harry Edwards has recently referred to the practice of allowing Black participation in the previously segregated realm of white sport as “selective predatory inclusion,” by which he means inclusion for the purposes of ruthless exploitation.
As of Dec. 11, there had been at least 6,629 cases of the novel coronavirus reported in university athletic departments, including players and staff. This includes complete data from only 78 of 130 FBS schools. Note that LSU Coach Ed Orgeron has admitted that “most of our players have caught it,” yet LSU’s data is unreported and not included in the total figure, which would be significantly higher if the NCAA and member institutions together had required these departments to report the full data. One-fifth of all college football games this season were ultimately cancelled because of players and staff members infected with the virus. Imagine how many more would have been cancelled if the true case numbers had not been kept from us.
The conditions in college football are disturbingly conducive to the spread of the virus according to infectious disease expert Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Georgetown Center for Global Health, Science and Security. She told us that “aside from close contact on the field, players live communally, are in close, poorly ventilated quarters in locker rooms, and travel to places together. And if protocols are in place to address all this, then the players are rigidly sequestered and there are consequences for their academic productivity and mental health.”
Indeed, when it comes to the full cost of this pandemic season, there remains little clarity given the myriad structural factors that constrain full disclosure. Here are some things we do know. Twenty-year-old Division II California University of Pennsylvania defensive lineman Jamain Stephens died of blood clots in his heart associated with COVID-19. Clemson University defensive back Xavier Thomas was diagnosed with the virus in late March/early April and suffered from the effects of so-called “long COVID” for many months. In early December, University of Miami defensive back Al Blades Jr. was diagnosed with myocarditis and required to sit through the end of the season. According to a study published in JAMA Cardiology that performed heart imaging of athletes, 15 percent of college athletes who contracted and recovered from COVID-19 had signs of myocarditis and another 30 percent had evidence of ongoing myocardial inflammation.
As Dr. Rasmussen told us: “All the reports of myocarditis in young, healthy athletes have given me pause. This is a condition that can be permanently debilitating. Given that many college football players have ambitions of professional careers, this could have devastating effects on those ambitions in addition to having lasting implications for their health and safety.”
We also know that myocarditis can be a cause in sudden cardiac death of athletes—a potential factor in the collapse of University of Florida basketball player Keyontae Johnson, who contracted the virus earlier in the year and reportedly was diagnosed with acute myocarditis. The threat of myocarditis in post-COVID players is particularly concerning given that the condition can only reliably be diagnosed via cardiac MRI, a scarce and expensive form of medical testing only mandated in COVID-19 protocols by the Big Ten conference. Vanderbilt University women’s basketball player Demi Washington’s myocarditis was only diagnosed because the university exceeded protocols by requiring the cardiac MRI; other SEC schools like the University of Florida do not require it, raising significant questions about how many other athletes were placed at extreme risk during the football season and continue to be in college basketball.
Concerns led women's basketball programs like Duke and SMU to cancel their seasons before their players could be subjected to more harm in just this past month. But, in Power Five college football, universities decided that too much money would be left on the table should they decide not to play. In 2019, the Power Five conferences brought in $2.9 billion in revenue, approximately 80 percent of which was drawn from football. Most of that money comes from television deals that schools were evidently loathe to disappoint.
As a consequence, what we all witnessed this fall—and what players experienced—was college football stripped of its festive veneer, leaving nothing but the rough and unvarnished reality of brute labor without pay. The Power Five player who opted out of the season characterized it this way: “I just think this season has really cemented the idea that the NCAA can do whatever it wants. With teams on the West Coast having to leave their own state in order to even practice, you really wonder how anyone can believe where the priorities of those in charge lie.”
For one Pac 12 player, the problem was in part that, despite the profoundly abnormal nature of the experience of college football in a pandemic, expectations remained fairly static with football as usual ranking ahead of school:
“School also bothered me a bit. I was here trying to finish finals while preparing for a big game while COVID cases were going up, worrying about what's going on at home and focus in practice and not be overwhelmed by everything. Our coaches did better than what I've heard at other places. It could have been a lot worse from what I've heard around the country. At other schools, despite COVID, nothing changed in terms of expectations, practices, etc. It's what you'd expect in football, but, also, we're in a pandemic.”
The player continued: “Now that the season's over, I'm like, whoa, there's still a pandemic going on. All this time we've been in some kind of bubble, removed from what's going on a bit, not having to think about what's going on, although it's in the back of your head and you sometimes feel guilty. It's kind of normalized—you get used to what's going on.”
“Honestly the season has been just rough all around,” another PAC 12 player told us. “Every week feels like we are in limbo about if we are going to play or not. Or getting games rescheduled in the middle of the week. And no one follows the guidelines that closely. How are you supposed to remind your coach to keep his distance? Or to put his mask up? Some of them don’t take this as serious, it’s business as usual. That takes a toll on your mental health. I think a lot of people outside of the facility have this idea that everything is fine and normal since we are back playing, but it’s not the same.”
Yet, nothing was normal this season, including its conclusion. At some schools, players were given the opportunity to decide whether to proceed with unpaid overtime—also known as bowl season. For instance, although coaches and administrators wanted to plow ahead, 90 percent of the University of Pittsburgh team voted not to play in a bowl game. As Assistant Coach Charlie Partridge explained, “The stress on them has been immeasurable. Haven’t left dorms or apartments since June 8 other than football.” At Virginia Tech, after three-quarters of the team contracted the virus over the course of the season, players voted to snap a 27-year bowl streak. These schools were part of a lengthy list of Power Five institutions that chose not to participate, mostly at the behest of players via votes. Overall, at least 19 bowl games were cancelled this year, despite the fact that a waiver was granted making every school eligible for participation.
Lest this be taken completely as evidence of shifting labor terrain in the sport, it is equally noteworthy that none of these schools belong to the sport’s preeminent conference, the SEC. As interim coach Mike Bobo said of his South Carolina team, “There’s no vote in the SEC. You come to play in the SEC, you come to play ball. I told them we’re going to play in the ballgame, and if guys didn’t want to play, we’re going to report back on this date (and) if you don’t want to play, you can opt out. We didn’t have a vote.” A player in the SEC told us that “we didn’t even talk about a vote. It wasn’t an option.” It is notable that ultimately South Carolina withdrew from bowl consideration because of contact tracing and the fact that “some players did not want to play for interim HC Mike Bobo.”
Another SEC team, the University of Missouri, was forced to withdraw from the Music City Bowl after nearly 20 players and staff tested positive in the eight days before the game. There was no report that the team had been offered the opportunity to vote on the game, although it was revealed that Missouri’s coach would have received a one-year extension and a $100,000 raise for winning a bowl game.
The player votes should be understood within the context of the carceral dimensions of players’ experiences working at college football during this interminable semester. Nearly every enjoyable aspect of life as a campus athletic worker was stripped away, leaving only unvarnished labor, confinement, and surveillance. A player who we reached out to while with his team preparing for the college football playoff had similar experiences, telling us simply that “[coaches] have us on lock.” As nearly a million people were free to travel across the country on the eve of Christmas, college athletic workers were on empty campuses preparing for even more unpaid labor at the behest of coaches and athletic departments.
The issue of isolation was a persistent theme in the experiences of players. An ACC player told us that “Once the season started, the biggest impact COVID had on our team was the fact that we were unable to see our families and friends. Once we arrived back on campus in July, we were unable to leave for the remainder of the season. Because we were unable to leave campus and there were traveling concerns for our families, players had no family contact at all… No one on the team wanted to be the one who contracted the virus and spread it to other teammates. So this lack of family and friends in players' lives was a major challenge this fall.”
A Big Ten player characterized the isolation this way: “I think the hardest thing about the season was having to completely detach yourself from society, knowing that a positive test would ruin your season.” The first Pac 12 player we spoke with said that “there was a mental toll in having to do things every day because of the protocols and you can't even hang out with your teammates in the facility or in the apartments because of distancing.”
For the player who opted out, there was a double standard between players and coaches when it came to issues of compensation, isolation, and commitment that was particularly difficult to stomach.
“The idea that players today are selfish is laughable, and is an opinion voiced by the willfully ignorant. Why are college football players in meetings with a coach who is making millions?” one player told us. “Heck, look at Nick Saban for example. The man is in commercials and owns Mercedes car dealerships. He’s capitalizing on his branding. We should be able to too. I get that being a football head coach is hard, especially when you’re as successful as a Nick Saban. But being a college athlete is hard too. Especially when you’re having to take finals the same day as a game, when you’re having to take Zoom classes while traveling to other states in order to conduct practice legally as a team, or when you are prohibited to see your family under threat of a two-week quarantine while your coaching staff goes home to theirs every night.”
An athlete in the SEC added, “I know lots of people are saying we want to play and so [playing football during the pandemic is] OK. Yeah, I mean, I love playing football, but when do I get a say in this?”
That question of consent has been a fraught one throughout the season. Players like Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State’s Justin Fields publicly campaigned on the slogan that #WeWantToPlay, suggesting that players were very much signed up for the rigors of a pandemic season. And yet, there are some important problems with this narrative. Most critically, it is easy to forget the broader structural context that shapes participation in college sport: the system of racial capitalism that relentlessly denies opportunities for socioeconomic opportunity and class mobility outside of a few proffered avenues, one of which, for the fortunate and exceptionally gifted, is college sport. After years of physical sacrifice and devotion to the sport, how easy is it for players to give it up just as they approach the end or the finish line of professional football?
Further, given this broader context, as Natalie Weiner points out, there are a range of additional structural conditions that make consent in this context something of an illusion. Players must grapple with fears related to draft stock and playing time, as well as coaches and fans criticizing athletes if they dare to place their health above total dedication to the team (and corresponding money that is on the line). In other words, put bluntly by Dr. Rasmussen: “many college players have no choice or limited choices with regard to their eligibility and academic scholarships. It is shameful to ask unpaid student athletes to put themselves at risk for the sake of what society claims to ‘need.’ And I am not speaking as an academic who is hostile or indifferent towards sports. I love football.”
Another important thing to consider in the context of consent is whether campus athletic workers have the information available to make educated decisions about the level of risk they are undertaking to play in the context of a novel coronavirus that health professionals themselves are struggling to grasp in real time. We already know from a JAMA study conducted in 2017 that 43 percent of college football players underestimated their risk of injury and 42 percent underestimated their risk of concussion.
“Nobody is talking about complications around here,” a player in the SEC told us. “The coaches aren’t, the trainers aren’t. But we are talking about it and to tell you the truth we are pretty freaked out about it… I bet most of the guys would still play if coaches were honest with them, but they aren’t and that freaks me out.”
For anyone who cares about the wellbeing of those who labor to make the spectacle of college football possible, the disproportionate cost players have had to pay for this desperate season are increasingly hard to deny. As Dr. Rasmussen put it, “We have to ask, is this trade off worth it for uncompensated athletes who are theoretically doing this in exchange for a great education and a rich and fulfilling college experience?”
The athletes are wondering the same thing.
As one player said: “I keep asking myself, you know, like if we were in the championship, would I be OK with all this? And to be honest I don’t think I would be.”
Who can blame him?
