That being said, they weren’t cancelled as of recording. They had spreads. GAMBLOR demands tribute. Who are we to argue?

#HAILGAMBLOR

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Twitch VoD

The post HLS Picks: Setting the Game Total at 6.5 This Week appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Traditional technical issues aside, the rest of college football is keeping the straight up rollercoaster of 2020 alive and well. The Big XII continues to lobby their way out of the playoff, Mississippi State got the full Mike Leach experience in two weeks, leading Shane and I to try to figure out just what we actually know about the national picture at this point.

We also take a look ahead to Notre Dame and Florida State and discuss the roller coaster of emotions of these last couple of weeks, including Notre Dame getting far more of a pandemic spotlight than either of us ever wanted.

Podcast

Twitch VoD

Remember the audio issues I mentioned? That’s because I had some kind of crazy static in my audio that I had to edit out. If you really want to witness it, you can find it here, but I’m not going to embed that mess.

The post HLS Recap: The Sober One appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

With that said, the HLS Podcast will return, hitting your feeds on Monday, September 7, and the live Twitch recording stream on Sunday, September 6 at around 9 PM CDT / 10 PM EDT. The weekly schedule will look like this:

• Recap Pod – Stream: Sunday 9 PM CDT / 10 PM EDT, Podcast: Monday
• Picks Pod – Stream: Wednesday 9 PM CDT / 10 PM EDT, Podcast: Thursday
• HLS Sim – Stream: Thursday 9 PM CDT / 10 PM EDT, Podcast: Friday

There will be a couple changes to these shows. First, there will be no associated pick ’em this season with the picks pod. There are simply too many variables to track this season. In fact, Eddie and I are going to spend the first part of the pod laying the ground rules for how we will toss games from our own records in our annual Extra Life charity bet.

Next, the HLS Sim is going to be it’s own self-contained fantasy land. It will be the only show that will allow for Twitch crowd-triggered sound drops and text-to-speech tomfoolery. Get it all out of your system here!

Regardless of what happens in real life, the Sim will charge ahead more recklessly with the season than the SEC could ever dream of. We will follow the ACC’s currently published schedule rain, shine, or COVID outbreak.

That wasn’t a typo, by the way. I said the ACC’s schedule. While Shane and I will do commentary for the ND games, I will sim results off-stream for the rest of the ACC. We will have a new segment in the recap pod to cover what happened in the COVID-free video game world, complete with updated virtual ACC standings every week.

While we will have these bouts of silliness, I hope no one truly expects us to ignore reality. We will still continue to track and update our COVID spreadsheet and report/talk about the situation on campus. Notre Dame having the potential to be a really good football team doesn’t wash that away.

As our friends at Notre Dame Our Blogger so eloquently stated, there is no more just sticking to sports. Neither Shane or I (or even Eddie) can dissociate ourselves from what’s going on in the world and “stick to sports” and just churn out the content like all is well. If that’s too much for you, you might just want to stick to the Sim show/pod.

We will have some more changes as I iron a few things out, but they will be good ones and some of them will also do some good through charity. Overall, we will try to do what the Notre Dame students currently are: trying to make the best out of a bad situation.

Go Irish. Beat COVID.

The post HLS Podcast Schedule, How We’ll Try to Cover 2020 appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

Feel free to watch the speech in its entirety below. It will take you less time to watch it than it would have to read his op-ed to bring students back to campus which I tore apart months ago.

This Should’ve Been the Initial Plan

I could spend an entire section delivering an angry rant at Fr. Jenkins’ decision to cancel the town hall, bypassing questions submitted by the Notre Dame community and shielding St. Joseph Deputy Health Director, Dr. Mark Fox, as well. Instead of focusing on Fr. Jenkins dodging anything resembling accountability–after all, why do that when someone else can (kinda) do it for you–I will react to what he did announce based on the advice of the absent Dr. Fox.

Notre Dame will do what they should’ve done from the start of their disastrous experiment. The campus will shut down for two weeks, with all undergraduate classes going remote.

Don’t worry, the faculty got plenty of notice to prepare for this massive and sudden change:

All dorms are locked down to residents only with a strict no-visitors policy. Off-campus students are to stay off-campus. On-campus students are to stay on-campus. Gatherings are now limited to 10 people from 20, with masks and social distancing required even outdoors.

After two weeks, Fr. Jenkins hopes in-person learning resumes and the current spread of COVID, now at 147 cases off of 927 tests (15.87%). This plan is what you’ve seen pro sports bubbles like the NBA, WNBA, and NHL do…except for that whole part in which they did the strict isolation first to avoid the initial outbreak.

Minor details.

Oh, speaking of sports. They can still practice, exempt from the 10 person gathering rule. The reason for this is because of the regular surveillance testing that they’ve been receiving which sounds like a fantastic idea for the student body that Notre Dame wanted to shove back on campus.

Vote of No Confidence

I mean, it could be worse right? We could see students believing that they’ll be sent home within two weeks and doing anything like spending all their flex points from their already paid for meal plans in a buying panic at LaFortune.

Now, before you think it’s silly that students would start raiding The Huddle like it’s a toilet paper rush at the beginning of this pandemic, the Notre Dame subreddit had a story about not receiving food while in quarantine. The author of that post wasn’t the only one that claimed such an experience either.

In both that thread, and in talking with students, the stories carried a similar theme that was prevalent in my last post: an overwhelmed system struggling to keep up and fulfill basic needs, leading to massive student frustration.

As I stated earlier, Fr. Jenkins had a couple of VPs take this bullet for him and admit the system was broken:

While it’s not impossible for Notre Dame to turn things around, recent history is not on their side. One student did provide a silver lining stating their test was indeed automatically scheduled as Notre Dame had promised over the weekend from their daily health check. This student, who resides on campus, found out he had been in contact with a positive case and filled his health check out a second time to trigger the test.

Quarantine Life

Despite that small piece of success, that same student stated that they, as well as others he chatted with in quarantine, did not receive food on their first day and had to use a gig delivery service to get meals.

Another student confirmed that, once they arrived in quarantine, there was no food and very sparse arrangements. That student provided HLS with photos of a bed with linens that reminded me of ND Reunion weekend accommodations as well as pictures of documentation that was there upon arrival and from their testing (the first student reported not having this documentation in their room).

Note: I’ve redacted any information that could either be personally identifying or any contact information for Notre Dame COVID resources that clearly don’t need to be swamped any further.

I certainly don’t expect Notre Dame to provide the Ritz in quarantine. In fact, I’m happy they did try to provide some of those guides, especially in regards to mental health. There’s good effort here, I don’t want that to get lost.

That being said, this student also reported that when they tested positive, they were shuttled over rather quick to their quarantine digs. There was no discussions of what to expect or what to do. In an already high-stress situation, being dropped in a room with a few pieces of paper is overwhelming. I can only imagine what students felt like that didn’t have all this documentation on hand.

The Off-Campus Boogeyman

Perhaps the most annoying thing about today’s events is the Notre Dame administration not just placing the lion’s share of the blame on the students, but off-campus students. This isn’t just isolated to COVID either. Back when I was at Notre Dame, off-campus life still had this weird separation from Notre Dame and far too often painted as the root of all evil.

I lived on-campus for four years and I could never understand it for the life of me.

Look, I understand Notre Dame has reported that the majority of their cases are from off-campus students. “Ground zero” for everything has been reported as an off-campus party. I get it.

The problem is that this is a two-way street. Fr. Jenkins can’t deliver a scolding in hopes of triggering Catholic guilt on a YouTube address and completely ignore the failings of his own administration and how poorly everything was executed.

There are no publicly available on/off-campus splits on the COVID Dashboard, or any other demographic information for us to put data behind these claims or, more importantly, true surveillance testing to see how many off-campus students are actually doing this right.

Notre Dame rubber-stamped not testing asymptomatic students, an incredibly short-sighted policy. Had ND treated that party like their own football team and tested everyone that was there or in contact with people that attended, they likely aren’t staring at the razor’s edge of sending students home.

I understand students bear responsibility for keeping the campus safe too, but they are not highly compensated professionals (yes, Fr. Jenkins is a priest, but he still pulls a salary that goes to the Order of the Holy Cross). The administration’s job is to create a safe environment to educate, knowing that part of the education of many college students will be learning from really bad decisions.

Notre Dame can wag the finger all they wish at the off-campus sinners, but they are far from a picture of perfection to cast these stones. Attitude reflects leadership. If the leadership continues to bungle the response, there is no hope for all the 18-22 year-olds to fall in line.

The administration might as well book their tickets home now and admit this two week shutdown is less a Hail Mary for in-person learning and just a way to reduce the chance you send infectious students home.

The post HERE Comes the Clusterfuck appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

But HERE we are.

Spending any time around social media this week has revealed some rather disturbing stories as to just how not-great the COVID response is on campus, especially when it comes to testing. I always want to think the best of my alma mater, but with anecdotes like those, I wanted to try to figure out just what in the hell was going on.

It took less than 24 hours to reveal what I can only describe as a sub-optimal situation in Notre Dame’s attempt to create a safe, in-person learning bubble.

To Notre Dame’s credit, there is far more public communication than I’d expect. There is a public dashboard showing the results all tests performed on-campus and the amount of confirmed COVID cases. Not only that, today they published an open letter which was emailed to the student body, directly addressing the concerns and stories shared on social media.

Yet, these public-facing actions a lackluster response that I feared after Fr. Jenkins’ ill-fated op-ed. Thursday’s latest update showed only 40 tests were performed on August 12, yet two days prior, 202 tests were performed on campus.

The cause of that massive spike:

Including athletics in reporting is great for transparency; however, the dramatic difference in testing numbers sends everyone scrambling to look for the fire amidst the social media smoke.

To Test or Not to Test?

In that quest, I was able to talk to an off-campus student who had direct experience with University Health Services denying a test. This student had direct contact with their significant other and another friend who tested positive for COVID, with the last contact coming this Tuesday morning, August 11.

Knowing they had direct contact, the student called UHS. They were then re-directed to a hotline which was nothing more than a voicemail box when they called in. Nearly forty hours later, they received a call back. Despite stating that they had direct contact with multiple positive cases, UHS told them Notre Dame would not test asymptomatic cases.

This largely fits the statement made in today’s public letter:

A University Health Services (UHS) medical provider will determine whether you need a diagnostic test and what type. Please follow the advice on your daily health check pass about when you should consult with UHS. Our providers order tests based on either primary symptoms or 2 or more days of secondary symptoms of COVID-19. When the clinical circumstances warrant it, UHS providers err on the side of ordering a test.

While this stance should be debated (spoiler alert: not doing asymptomatic testing isn’t wise), the confusion didn’t stop there. When the student asked about next steps, they were informed, but not mandated, that it would be wise to quarantine, calling back if symptoms occurred.

Now, the student is remaining in their off-campus home in the name of caution and remotely Zooming into their classes.

If you are wondering what the “primary” symptoms that ND would test for, the off campus student would like to know as well. They witnessed a phone call between their roommate and UHS in which the roommate reported a cough and sore throat and their test approved. Yet the day prior another friend called in with the exact same symptoms and didn’t receive their test.

When I asked about the presence of “walk up” testing sites, I received a laugh at the other end of the line: “Yeah, walk up if you have an appointment.”

Numbers Game

Further frustrating this student was that they were never contacted by any university employed contact tracer. In talking with their significant other, they were told that the tracers were only interested in previous contact to find the potential origin of exposure. Contact after that point didn’t appear to be a concern.

This is in direct conflict to the following contact tracing policy communicated publicly today:

The University’s trained contact tracers will identify and notify close contacts who need to quarantine. Students must respond promptly to contact tracers and share complete information with them. Details provided by students to contact tracers will not be shared for disciplinary reasons. The amount of time you spent with someone, when, and under what conditions determines whether you will be considered a close contact and need to be tested. Casual exposure, especially if you are wearing a mask and practicing physical distancing, means you probably do not need a test and will not need to quarantine. If you know a friend who has tested positive for COVID-19 and believe you had sustained, direct contact with that person, please call UHS at 574-631-0603.

With this frustration, the student and friends performed pseudo contact-tracing of their own. They knew of multiple parties and other larger (about 20 or so people) gatherings off campus. They were shocked to see ND claim the source of all reported cases were a single off-campus party based on their knowledge.

Even more confusing was seeing the numbers published on the ND dashboard on Thursday, as they estimate they know of more cases than what Notre Dame is reporting. While it’s not a significant amount, it is adding to the confusion of figuring out just how bad this initial wave of exposure is.

The frustration that this student felt and led him to talk to me was similar to what I’ve gone through in Texas and go on many a Twitter rant. The purpose is to try and let as many people possible know what is going and, hopefully, drive additional action by Notre Dame.

That additional action is certainly needed, as the numbers on dashboard not only poorly separate the athletic tests from the student body, but that, as of now, the reporting skews the overall testing percentage numbers this early in the game.

Overall, Notre Dame can boast a 6.2% positive percentage rate; however, once athletic surveillance testing is taking out, the past two days turn in terrifying 19% and 17.5% rates the past two days. Removing August 10 completely (as it’s impossible to tell what is athletics and what isn’t) Notre Dame is left with 106 tests and 15 positive cases–a 14.1% rate.

Those are the kinds of numbers that force cities to start shutting things down and opening more testing sites. It also causes questions like “why isn’t Notre Dame doing some sort of surveillance testing for the student body?” It’s not like other campuses aren’t doing it. The University of Illinois will test all students and staff twice a week and their enrollment of 30,000+ is just slightly larger than Notre Dame.

HLS obtained an email to a faculty group at Notre Dame, stating that such surveillance testing would be coming–in a month.

But why wait until August to come up with this idea? The truth is, such testing was discussed and promised back in June 26, roughly one month after Fr. Jenkins published his op-ed. This promise occured in another email obtained by HLS sent to all Notre Dame employees.

From: Office of the Provost <provost@nd.edu>
Date: June 26, 2020 at 12:07:51 PM EDT
To:nd-employees-group@nd.edu
Subject:Reopening the University — Message 5 (From Provost Burish, Provost-Elect Miranda, EVP Cullinan, and VP Hoffmann Harding)
Reply-To:provost@nd.edu

Dear Notre Dame Community Members:

We write to provide an update on several key health protocols at the University. The plan outlined below will supplement the extensive health and safety modifications (required face coverings, physical distancing, etc.) described in previous communications and on the Notre Dame coronavirus website. In developing these plans, we are focused on making the best possible decisions to enhance the health and safety of Notre Dame and South Bend community members.

…

Surveillance Testing
Surveillance testing refers to the notion of randomly screening community members to assess baseline rates of infection or prior exposure to the infection, including determining rates of asymptomatic infection. We are working with relevant medical experts and our own faculty (Alex Perkins, Jenna Coalson, and Bernard Nahlen) to identify an approach to surveillance testing that would make sense for the campus. Many different approaches exist, and testing technology continues to evolve. Determining the approach Notre Dame will take for surveillance will require some further exploration, investigation, and modeling. We are grateful for the outstanding work being done by our colleagues and for the generous contribution of expert advice by so many local and national medical specialists.

Based on these two emails, very little has changed in regards to any details or anything resembling a concrete plan for surveillance testing for over a month. Notre Dame kicked the can down the road for another month.

By then, it may be too late.

Failure to Launch the Bubble

The other piece of Notre Dame’s plan to return safely to campus was pre-matriculation testing. This too was detailed in the June 26 email:

Pre-matriculation Testing
Before returning for the fall semester (pre-matriculation), students who reside outside of St. Joseph County, as well as St. Joseph County residents who will live in Notre Dame residence halls, will undergo testing. We are working with LabCorp, a leading national provider of tests and lab services, to develop a program to distribute tests to students in late July and for University Health Services to receive the results from LabCorp before students return to campus. Any student who tests positive will be asked to refrain from returning to campus until they are medically cleared to do so.

However, even this testing had some short-comings, which honestly should be expected when scaling up to 11,836 total tests.

One student reported concern with the timeline of the tests. They reported that tests tests were received a week in advance of moving in. For their personal test, they took it on Wednesday, July 29 and moved in to campus on Thursday, August 6. At that point the test they took, and anyone else following a similar timeline, is rather worthless to truly track potential exposure.

Another student reported flat out not receiving their pre-matriculation test, causing confusion of a different kind. As Notre Dame required a verified negative test to attend classes in-person, they had to wait for University Health Services to verify the results as it came outside the usual process. This process wasn’t complete by the time classes started, forcing them to remote in to their classes.

As people see Zooming into classes as a sign of potential contact or being COVID-positive, this had led to additional confusion about the potential spread among the student body. When you take into account people like the off-campus student I talked to, who are quarantining out of caution and haven’t been tested, it’s impossible to use remote attendance as any kind of a metric.

When you compare this to pro sports bubbles like the NBA, it’s not even close. Everyone had to do an initial quarantine and then received a test. Once negative, they could roam the bubble/resort within certain guidelines.

Many of us have called Notre Dame it’s own bubble, but this situation is anything but.

Where to go from HERE

Based on these stories, two things are rather clear. First, Notre Dame has faculty fighting like hell to try and improve ND’s current approach to this situation. Second, while ND has an unenviable task of trying to figure this out, when Fr. Jenkins made his “morality” claim, they needed to knock this out of the park and have fallen well short.

It’s not impossible to recover, but the University needs to seriously reconsider their stance on asymptomatic testing at minimum. While surveillance testing should be the ultimate goal, allowing asymptomatic testing will help cover that gap for those that had direct contact like the off-campus student I interviewed.

As the light shines brighter, I’d like to believe Notre Dame will rise to the challenge for the sake of their students. Otherwise, stories like these will continue.

And I’m tired of writing these kinds of stories.

The post What Is Going on HERE?! appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

The headline above isn’t clickbait. It’s my 100% God’s-honest belief. I’m not looking to play the anti-Clay Travis for traffic (if we actually cared about pageviews in this climate, we would’ve posted more). It’s time to cease beating around the bush or having this site remain silent while we make fleeting quips on Twitter about the season’s impending doom.

Yes, I’ve called out Fr. Jenkins recently. That post however tore into his odd stance that in-person education somehow was a moral responsibility of my alma mater. Football was, at best a fleeting thought.

At best, Jenkins’ stance is naive. At worst, the decision smacks of intentional greed–endangering student, faculty, staff, and the surrounding Michiana community in a fruitless attempt to slap a tourniquet on financial losses in lieu of having hard conversations with donors to approve a re-direction their near $14 billion dollar endowment to emergency needs.

If Notre Dame plows ahead with their football season, Fr. Jenkins, the board of trustees, the entire Notre Dame administration, and the athletic department will have removed all doubt. As I write this, the MAC just announced their season is cancelled, effectively wiping out the Irish’s lone non-ACC tilt and the Big Ten has postponed any full-contact pad practices.

I understand that it’s much easier for me to sit in my office and spill angry internet ink than to pull the plug on one of the most recognizable football brands in college football for a season, especially after our conference with benefits allowed us to go have the milk of the ACC championship for free for one season only. Having conversations with donors, accountants, and investors is no easier and I won’t even pretend to know the ins and outs of how to tap into the endowment for a semester or two.

Yet failing to do so ignores a rich history of Notre Dame doing the right thing even when it was hard. Domers turned the slur “Fighting Irish” into a beloved official nickname when they fought, rioted, and kicked the KKK out of South Bend.

The beloved photo of Fr. Hesburgh standing hand-in-hand with Martin Luther King, a man murdered for his “radical” belief in racial equality, is more than just a feel good thing we can post on social media, but a strong statement that America’s most famous Catholic university would happily fight along-side MLK for civil rights despite rampant opposition to fight it tooth and nail.

My dorm, Sorin College, keeps “College” in their name instead of “Hall” because they seceded from ND in protest of the Vietnam War.

In football, Notre Dame was forced on the independent path. Yet there was a time in which the Big Ten sought to bury that hatchet and welcome the Irish in with open arms. We declined.

Notre Dame could, and really should, have been forced into the ACC when the conferences realigned and when the College Football Playoff was born. Jack Swarbrick wouldn’t give up that independence, so deeply ingrained within the program, even though doing so would make the Irish’s playoff and title chances harder. We’ve still made the playoffs despite it.

Instances like these echo in the motto burned into the mind of every alumni, including our Subway brethren: “God. Country. Notre Dame.” It’s the ideal priority that Notre Dame strives to teach beyond the classroom-“The Notre Dame Experience” if you will. Yet, when it comes to the football season, such priorities have disappeared beyond Under Armor stitching the motto on football jerseys so it can be “different” from their Adidas predecessors.

God.

Notre Dame will always be a unique marriage of religion and football. Touchdown Jesus stares right at Notre Dame stadium. As the team walks to the stadium, He is directly behind them as He is when they run onto the field. The student body enters the gate closest to Him and First Down Moses is right beside him. The team’s helmets include gold that plates the Dome, on top of which the namesake of the University stands watch over the entire campus.

I absolutely love the unique relationship between God and football, as silly as that may sound. However, the true “soul” of Notre Dame football, as well as college football comes from a different marriage: that of the fans and the team. One can’t exist without the other. A season devoid of true interaction with our fellow alumni, Subway alumni, and current students both on and off the field has no soul.

If we take the loose definition of God and religion in football terms, having a football for just the sake of having football under these soulless conditions creates an exercise to drive money. Further, this exercise puts players at risk to contact an illness that could affect their future health, which is why so many are already opting out.

Country.

Even if Notre Dame and the rest of the power five schools wish to barrel ahead with the season, it’s because of another unique marriage, largely specific to our country: sports and higher education.

There’s little doubt that sports is big business in the States, but it’s such a huge part of our societal DNA, that success in sports leads to bigger financial windfalls for colleges. Win games, get more applicants, get more donations, cash more checks–it even has a name and it’ll make you sick–The Flutie Effect.

The Washington Post gathered data back in 2018 on this American phenomenon. While it’s not completely foolproof, there is little doubt the administrations of higher education buy into it. Sports, especially football, find money dumped into their laps in the hopes that the investment returns additional applicants that they can parlay into financial success and prestige.

Perhaps God can forgive the soulless exercise of college football in 2020 under these terms. After all, if education of America’s young adults is a moral duty, that can’t happen without a cash flow and that cash flow can’t happen for a lot of colleges without a football season.

Even though seemingly every other non-power five entity either has or likely will soon refuse to walk on this path of good intentions, our country has actually demonstrated how to sports safely. The NBA, WNBA, NHL, MLS, and the NWSL have each put up bubbles and either have completed their shortened seasons or are still competing with no outbreaks or even positive tests putting the thing in danger.

What’s even more fascinating is that, while the NWSL and NHL have picked safer areas (Utah and Canada respectively), the NBA, WNBA, and MLS put theirs up in Florida, a state that trails only California in active cases and deaths while showing little signs of slowing down. Even in this situation, those pro leagues have thirved.

The PGA tour has had similar success, but not quite as of an impeccable record. Thanks to the nature of the sport and, in my personal opinion, everyone on the tour taking things a hell of a lot more seriously than at the start of their shortened tour, they’ve been humming along nicely.

Major League Baseball, however, is teetering on disaster. While MLB decided to create a regional travel schedule, that hasn’t stopped outbreaks. The most notable are the Miami Marlins, who decided via group text to play despite teammates testing positive, and the St. Louis Cardinals, who had some players allegedly go to a freakin’ casino.

Because of this, so many games have been cancelled that the baseball standings now look absolutely hilarious. At ones point, the Marlins led the NL East at 2-1, yet managed to be 1 game behind the second-place Braves because of the sheer difference in games played.

That’s the reality that could soon hit college football if they try to “replicate” this path. I use “replicate” rather loosely because of two reasons: (1) the power five conferences haven’t been anything close to regional in a long time and (2) there’s no central leadership at all.

The second point is the most concerning. As bad as MLB has handled things, the commissioner, or players union, could shut down the whole thing. In college football, the schools have tried to follow guidance from the NCAA and conferences. In response, the NCAA and conferences have kicked the can around, passed the buck to each other, and ultimately left things up to the schools because no one wants to make the hard decision.

Meanwhile, the players remain stuck in a no-win situation. Thankfully, many realize that they wield the true power in this situation. Even without real central leadership or organization, many players in the Pac 12 and the Big Ten have released statements demanding better accountability and for the adults in the room to demonstrate some actual leadership or they won’t play.

There are already cracks in these unified fronts, however. For example, Ohio State released a statement flat out saying the Big Ten United movement doesn’t represent them:

I would not be surprised to soon here from a Buckeye or two that will say the statement above doesn’t represent them as well.

It’s a mess. Leadership is absent.

The blueprint for how to safely hold sporting events is available if the conferences are willing to throw their crazy TV money at it and create their own bubbles. However, that would then remove student-athletes from being a “normal” student, crippling the NCAA’s current fight against name, image, and likeness rights for athletes and the entire amateurism model in college sports.

The breaking point is coming. What side of history do these conferences and schools wish to be on? They can either finally agree that student-athletes are different and the entire model should be restructured so they can bubble and play safely to earn that sweet, sweet football revenue or they can see this is a losing hand no matter how they play and should fold.

Notre Dame is in a unique position in this situation. They’ve always maintained a different kind of relationship with sports and academics, all the way up to only putting luxury boxes in ND Stadium, but only when new academic buildings went up attached to the stadium. They can continue to play this hand and set an example for the rest of the country, for the good of the country’s health if they wish.

Notre Dame.

On Friday, Notre Dame reported their first known positive case of COVID-19 on campus. This comes on the heels of being sent multiple pictures of social media from sources close enough to campus to be in student social media circles showing a failure to mask and social distance.

I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not to post said photos. I’ve decided not to as I’ve gotten these second-hand and I don’t want to blow up social media feeds of current students because someone sent a blogger in Texas something. Even posting the photos without citing the Twitter feed can bring it up in a reverse Google Image search.

That all being said, if you are a current student and you want to blow the whistle while on campus either publicly or anonymously, the DMs are open and I’m happy to be your megaphone.

As history with COVID has shown, this never stops at just one case. Notre Dame will have to take action and fast. The one saving grace for ND right now is that classes haven’t started yet, but they will soon. Now is the time to hunker down and create a true Notre Dame bubble for the sake of the campus and the surrounding community.

In order to do this, Fr. Jenkins will need to put action behind his stance on education being a moral imperative and he’s not off to a great start. While non-socially distanced and masked photos aren’t a great look, it’s not nearly as dangerous to the Notre Dame community as trying to pull of a football game on campus, exposing players to people from the outside and then expecting them to go back into the student population in classrooms and dorms.

Notre Dame has already put forth a 24/7 version of peritals and basically banned parties on and off-campus with potential disciplinary actions coming down for those that violate. Even dining on-campus will be radically different.

These are good measures, but far from the no-tolerance bubbles that the NBA and WNBA are operating under. Sadly, all it takes is for one student to cause an outbreak in the dorm, which can hit a football player, and then can cause an outbreak on the team. This isn’t “fear porn” but a harsh reality.

The harsh reality should require Jenkins and the rest of the Notre Dame administration to examine the term “student-athlete” a bit closer. If ND wants to practice what they preach about the marriage of sports and academics, they are morally obligated to put the “student” part of student-athlete first.

Opt-out and cancel the season. Others will follow.

Scrambles will be had to figure out how to preserve eligibility, potentially have a mess of the scholarship cap, and cause a financial shortfall. It will be messy, but if the smaller schools without gigantic endowments are willing to do it, Notre Dame will be just fine.

Make this hard and unimaginable decision the starting point to show other major schools how it should be done. Encourage disruption of the current higher education model. Force schools to re-think how to manage endowments. Be the leader.

It will be a fight, but fights are something that Notre Dame has never backed down from. Fight for your students. Fight for your staff. Fight for your surrounding community.

Fight for all the lives that rest in the palm of your hand.

The post Notre Dame, It’s Time to Lead: Cancel the Season appeared first on Her Loyal Sons.

First we have “Go Irish, Beat COVID” which is fairly self explanatory, no? All proceeds will benefit my Extra Life campaign, benefiting the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Oklahoma City. I do this in honor of a family friend, Aven, who passed from Leukemia when he was only two. Over the years, we’ve raised nearly $30,000 in his memory to the only freestanding children’s hospital in the state of Oklahoma, who will never turn any family away regardless of financial status.

You can buy the mask here ($8 at debut discount) and the shirt here ($14 at debut discount).

To sweeten this pot, I will also donate proceeds from the sale of any mask in our store (with one notable exception as described below). Keep in mind that with the purchase of every mask, TeePublic will donate a medical-grade mask to Direct Relief.

The notable exception to the mask donation mentioned earlier is the “Fighting…For Equality” merch. Inspired by a rather well known campaign ad, I’m taking the question of “what are you fighting for?” rather seriously and with tangible action.

As our friends over at Notre Dame, Our Blogger pointed out, Notre Dame as a whole–the institution, students, alumni, and fans–have failed in making people of color feel truly and completely welcome and equal under the Dome. The first step is recognizing it. The next is trying to bring about change like signing this petition started by the black alumni of Notre Dame.

But we can’t just stop within the Notre Dame bubble. In the spirit of trying to bring about said change, all proceeds from the “Fighting…For Equality” merch will be donated to the ALCU (masks included). The ALCU has been right of the middle of practically every fight for justice and equality representing people of every race, creed, and sexuality over the years. Those fights will continue as we fight for true equality for all.

If you’d rather skip the TeePublic middle man and donate directly, I highly encourage you to do so:

• Extra Life, benefiting the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Oklahoma City
• America Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

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The article houses not just Notre Dame’s plan for trying to safely reopen during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the logic, or more specifically, the cited philosophical musings around the morality of education during said pandemic.

I’ve typed a lot of strange things on this site, but that last sentence takes the cake.

Anyways, here’s the short version of my thoughts about what Fr. Jenkins wrote: I think Notre Dame came up with as good of a plan as they possibly could to try to have an on campus fall semester. I could not disagree more with the philosophical/moral reasons Fr. Jenkins tossed out in the second half of his article, especially in choosing to ignore all of the ridiculously super-obvious financial reasons that are absolutely in play as well.

Want the (much) longer version? Well go on, loyal reader.

The Plan

Before I get in the weeds of the stuff that drove me insane, let’s focus on the plan Fr. Jenkins rolled out. The plan is a rather obvious list of how to pull anything off that will resemble “normal” life until a vaccine is in place. It includes:

• “Extensive” protocols for testing
• Contact tracing and quarantining
• Social distancing
• Wearing of masks
• Early arrival, no fall break, leave before Thanksgiving to reduce the amount of back-and-forth travel.

The devil, however, is in those lacking details. I don’t fault Fr. Jenkins for not having them as August is still a couple of months away–any attempt to do so is just guessing which does no one any good.

That being said, with on-campus life being the draw at Notre Dame and a forced experience for at least one year (three for athletes), there’s no information on how dorms will execute the punch list. Social distancing is absolutely out the window in dorm life, but I can definitely foresee a nightmarish new version of parietals and additional provisions on either limiting or banning social gatherings.

The key here is the “extensive” testing, which is the great unknown for any plan like this that I’ve seen. While testing has thankfully risen in recent weeks, it’s still hard to imagine Notre Dame having access to an in-depth testing program considering that pro sports leagues, businesses, and other universities will also desire.

It’s not impossible. Other countries have absolutely figured this out. I certainly hope we do as well or this plan could be doomed to failure.

Football

I mean, we are a football site right? So here’s my “stick to sports” section.

Fr. Jenkins said he couldn’t envision filling the stadium, saying he “see[s] no way currently to allow spectators unless we restrict admissions so that physical distancing is possible.” I certainly hope you weren’t expecting anything else; in fact, I would be shocked if the crowd isn’t only students in the stands. It would seem foolish to invite travel from all over the country, even in reduced capacity.

That being said, nothing is set in stone because the focus of Jenkins’ article was on education. Football and Notre Dame may be synonymous, but there’s no doubt the message from ND will continue to focus on education first and athletics later.

This Whole Morality…Thing

Now it’s time to tear into this in earnest because what in the hell is this?!

If we gave the first principle [of protecting the health of students] absolute priority, our decision about reopening would be easy. We would keep everyone away until an effective vaccine was universally available.

However, were we to take that course, we would risk failing to provide the next generation of leaders the education they need and to do the research and scholarship so valuable to our society. How ought these competing risks be weighed? No science, simply as science, can answer that question. It is a moral question in which principles to which we are committed are in tension.

Higher education is a moral issue on some kind of timer and can’t be put on hold? I can’t understand this logic for the life of me.

I understand morality plays a role in deciding what risks to place upon the students you are in charge of. In my professional life, I manage a small team and have struggled with similar decisions. I can’t possibly imagine making the decision for thousands. That being said, what’s the rush? Will we have a shortage of leaders if Notre Dame takes a knee for a semester?

A full pivot, even for just a semester, to online-only education is a non-starter. The on-campus experience is vital to what makes Notre Dame what it is and, more practically, the thing that justifies the price. I sure as heck wouldn’t want to pay that bill or have my kid take out a student loan for that. So I don’t understand why this major piece wasn’t even mentioned.

I get it’s a Catholic institution and mentioning money probably isn’t the look you want, but it’s at least a practical conversation that avoids this:

We are in our society regularly willing to take on ourselves or impose on others risks — even lethal risks — for the good of society. We send off young men and women to war to defend the security of our nation knowing that many will not return. We applaud medical professionals who risk their health to provide care to the sick and suffering. We each accept the risk of a fatal traffic accident when we get in our car.

I absolutely took the Lord’s name in vain after reading that.

I may have majored in engineering at ND, but I took enough humanities courses (the ND way!) to know I shouldn’t make such easily dismantled and lazy arguments.

Going to war is and should be seen as an absolute last resort. Students are not soldiers. Why in the world is everyone resorting to this warrior/war rhetoric for going to school, getting a haircut, or making sure my Chili’s queso is served in front of my face in a mass-produced iron skillet?

This is comparing apples and oranges. I’m sure Fr. Jenkins would agree that we should attempt all sorts of alternative solutions before shots are fired. War isn’t inevitable, yet the implication is that it is and it’s also somehow on the same level as a hungover student dragging their ass to an 8 AM class? Just…no.

The healthcare professional angle is confusing for similar reasons. They are absolutely needed or no one has hope of recovery. I definitely think my degree and my job is important, but I’m not making life and death decisions consistently during my shift. Doctors and nurses can’t take a break, but college students absolutely can.

Unless there’s a research group at Notre Dame close to curing COVID-19, I think everything else can wait a few months, but hey, if there’s something incredibly pressing, maybe just let those research groups come back instead of the whole student body? Just a thought.

And that brings us to the laziest argument of them all: the car. There has been no dumber argument during this pandemic and I can’t believe the president of my alma mater made it.

Look, driving a car is dangerous. It’s almost like there should be a set of laws to govern how we drive–like unified directions of traffic and set speed limits. I would go as far as to say there should probably also be safety measures within the car itself and to make sure people actually use them and manufactures don’t take shortcuts on their implementation of them. We should probably also make sure people don’t drive under the influence of alcohol and drugs because that seems really dangerous.

…have I *clears throat* driven this point home?

If we really want to use a car, here’s a better hypothetical to use that’s just as stupid:

Let’s say that every time you turn on your car, there is a chance of an explosion. Now, the chance is small. Should the explosion happen the chance of death is also fairly small, especially if you are young; however, you should know that the explosion could potentially harm or kill someone else in your vicinity. Again, small chance it could happen. You and 8,000 other people will hit the ignition every day, multiple times a day.

May the odds be ever in your favor. You also have a test on Thursday.

As any patron of the ‘Backer knows, life and risk go hand-in-hand. It’s a fool’s errand to pretend otherwise. I don’t expect Fr. Jenkins or Notre Dame to have a foolproof plan for August by May, but I certainly hoped for initial public statements to be a little more powerful than arguments any common social media troll would use followed with a shrug emoji.

If that’s the kind of thought that went into a planned PR statement, what should I realistically expect if the worst case scenario does happen and a positive test hits campus? Statistically the student will likely be okay, but I’m sure there are other students like myself that have asthma walking around, and that there will be constant interaction with senior citizens working on campus. While I hope this doesn’t happen, I certainly hope the reaction and the public response is handled better than this.

Perhaps even more concerning is that Fr. Jenkins didn’t even bother touching on the potential impact to the greater South Bend/Mishawaka community. I’m a bit shocked that talk of the morality in gauging risks in society didn’t even bother to mention the potential impact outside the ND bubble.

I seem to remember being taught and encouraged to have a positive impact on my community while on campus. Maybe devote as many paragraphs showing consideration for them as you did for your football fans? After all, college students aren’t wired to stay within the bubble and quite a few of them very happily live outside of it while attending school.

Finally, perhaps we should discuss the morality of sitting on a $13.8 billion endowment that could absolutely float ND and pay all its employees if tuition just completely disappeared. Nah, that’s crazy talk.

Off to war, classes of 2021-2024. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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