Football opts out

In case you missed it, Marist Athletics announced yesterday that our football team has opted out of competition in the 2021 spring season, which was scheduled to include six games in the Pioneer Football League. First and foremost, this is devastatingly disappointing for the men on this team, several of whom we know pretty well, as well as the fine coaching staff that was eagerly preparing for this truncated season. Half a season would have been better than no season. And now, they have no season. And that sucks for them, all of them. The decision to cancel participation in this season has elicited strong emotions from the parties involved. This is understandable. The purpose of this post is not to “take sides” – these are difficult decisions. One complicating factor of the PFL schedule is the massive amount of travel involved. PFL teams are spread throughout the country. Our Red Foxes were scheduled to travel to Iowa (Drake) in March and Florida (Stetson) and Indiana (Butler) in April. That’s a lot of travel during a risky time in this pandemic. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to ponder that this probably was a mitigating factor in the decision. Hypothetically, if football’s travel were all “local” – relatively short, day trips in the Northeast – would their season still be “on”? That’s a question without an answer, but one worth posing nonetheless.

Again, the football players are pissed, and they have every right to be pissed. Their hopes were raised in December for a spring season. And now those hopes have been dashed. Their emotional pain no doubt will be heightened if and when they see their fellow Red Foxes on other athletic teams – ourselves included – practicing for and playing in games or meets or races in March and April and May. That will sting. In the wake of yesterday’s decision regarding football, several folks texted me wondering if this did not bode well for our return-to-competition plans, in cross country and track. As humans, we are always seeking correlation. Can we connect the dots here? Not sure. We don't have trips planned to Iowa or Florida or Indiana, that's for sure; maybe that helps. We’re still awaiting word on our return to campus for practice. We’re all planning on late winter and spring seasons, we being other sports at Marist, while the pandemic rages. We (that would be me, here, on this fancy blog) posited a few posts ago about the strange juxtaposition: A pandemic rages and college athletics plows on and plans for games and meets and races. That map hasn’t changed, folks. I said it then, I say it now: No one wants to get back at it more than our athletes and our coaches. Decisions will be made, based on factors out of our control. Do I think we’ll be back to practicing and racing, relatively soon? I do. Could it all go sideways on us, like it did for the football guys? Absolutely, it can. All we can do is take it a day at a time.