Bartles

Does that team even have any news leaks that would be worth a female journalist trading sexual favors? Plus that is a thing that pretty much never happens, so to me those tweets kinda discredit the whole thing. I can certainly believe they cover up sexual assaults, but without a paper trail (police reports? internal emails?) that would all just be flinging poo at them. None of it seems like it would break in the Washington Post on a Friday.

I think those guys will be inside with a/c as in the past. Looks like the glass-enclosed area above the word "Home" and down towards 1st base from there, which is how the old ballpark was set up for media. The boxes above "of the Texas Rangers" are TV/radio. So it still looks like the new place has left blank an area where pretty much every other stadium would have four large sections of the top level infield seating. That's a bunch of revenue. It's quite possible that's a paid party area or something. I'm just intrigued because I can't think of another stadium that has a seating gap in that spot. Edit: It's between 315-316 on the seating map. Watching the overhead video on the web site, looks like there is some type of seating, possibly a restaurant or maybe it is indeed media seating.

Here's a decent rebuttal to Elam. You could argue it would lead to fewer upsets especially by defense-oriented teams. If given enough opportunities, the better team will climb up to the magic number.

The one in Philly was for recovering COVID patients. I don't think they ever had more than a half dozen patients and it was shuttered after a few weeks.

I'm not sure it effects 2020 voters, as the ones who know anything about the court surely know this seat will be opening in the next term anyway. But it definitely affects all life as we know it, starting with the ability to invalidate a Biden victory before he can be inaugurated.

Dallas County somehow hit exactly 1,000 cases. Seems like metroplex has settled around its peak level if not starting to fall. It will take a while to come down with numbers that high, though. Still too much spread

I think a lot of districts were jotting down concepts for the fall back in April, but couldn't really flesh them out because: they were drowning as it was trying to finish the spring in a new environment; the situation has changed sometimes daily on the medical front; districts wanted to collect evidence from overseas on what was working or not in those countries; they also wanted to survey parents and teachers over the summer before determining the best course. It will still be a shitshow almost everywhere

Eh, I knew the football-only-on-campus wouldn't get much support, in real life or on the board. Didn't mean it to come across as if that is my Plan A or I think it should happen regardless of virus conditions, neither of which is true. Having football and a few other students on campus would only work in a pretty specific health environment, like a community where the virus is mostly gone but not enough for all campus to be safe. Anyway, I won't waste any more space defending it since it was never gonna happen anyway.

The excellent @mattsarz pointed out that Fox only aired two Saturday night games last year, Buffalo-Penn State and OU-UCLA. Also the Saturday, Sept. 5 window remains open on Fox. So there's nothing to read into that MLB schedule posting.

Ha, I'm not trying to undermine the integrity or quality of the University of Texas. UT is in a much better position to weather all this than most campuses, so I don't blame y'all for wanting to cling to ideals of amateurism and brag about the medical system budget. But the sport as a whole depends on keeping other schools/communities afloat also. If that can be safely accomplished by prioritizing football for one semester, I am in favor of doing so. As I've said before, right now it's all moot because it's simply not safe.

I'm just stating the obvious. The FB money supports much more than just the 15-foot waterfall in the locker room or whatever. Entire communities depend on it, so for this season I don't have a problem prioritizing the football team. And also other essential student groups who are working on the medical and community support fronts of the virus battle. What the team does ($$$) goes hand-in-hand with medical research and local food drives in a time of crisis. Whether the players should be paid more or have to attend class at all is another topic. Yeah, the whole system has been off the rails for a while.

I meant bump all in-person classes back to spring so there are hardly any students on campus. Creates a better chance to successfully bubble the football team. It will never happen, but with the amount of money at stake I'm surprised it's not even considered.

My wife's charter in Philly is doing almost exactly this, only difference is they're diving right in with no on-line warmup. It's a decent plan, and more than half their parents are down with it at the moment. Still a few weeks away, but we think the skepticism is going to build as the date gets closer. Especially if data continues to indicate the kids can spread the virus pretty easily.

My hope is that football bubbled on campus would be safe, with frequent testing and isolating and positive cases. The more sports and other students you add, the less safe it becomes. But obviously the main reason to push the issue is to try to salvage such a huge economic engine of the university and community. I wouldn't force it under today's conditions in Texas. It really needs to be a situation where the community only has maybe a few dozen active cases at most. Honestly, if they announce tomorrow that they are shelving college sports until summer 2021, I wouldn't argue. But I see the international and the US pro leagues and I think it's doable.

Well, I didn't like that Thamel column. I don't doubt he has some high up sources being fatalistic as he describes. And it could certainly come to that if the situation stays so dangerous in much of the country for a couple more months. I am getting tired of people shitting on the pro leagues, even MLS, for their return plans. Those are basically working as intended, with a few hiccups. There were never going to be zero COVID cases when they set those plans. But they've dealt with them and those leagues are still on schedule. It would take some real carelessness by players to shut them down. As for CFB, of course that is a much bigger challenge. I continue to wish they would stop playing nice and tell the presidents that we need to bubble the FB players on campus and postpone the other sports. Maybe even postpone the general students in many cases. That was heresy a couple months ago, but it could be the only safe way to get the season in and collect the money.

Canceled by Showtime! How's that due process taste, dickhead?

I agree, but it would be too much of a system shock for everyone who's made their careers the old way. Bleeding out the clock with a big lead, and the chance for "teachable moments" anytime your NCAA team is down 10 with 1:30 left and a couple timeouts.

Both players next tests were negative. The DC guy probably unknowingly had COVID before coming to Florida, and remnants of it caused the positive test the other day. My guess is this would have been prevented by having teams report sooner, but players were against that.

The tab is nothing compared to the TV income from each game that gets played. P5 schools can do it once per week, though it really should be much more often than that, and there is the obvious problem that gen pop students are not being tested at all.

They put us in this Daily Texan thread instead of here. People were discussing the case a couple years ago

Yes, the power leagues plan to test weekly (at least). Money talks, and it's not the conferences' fault that US government has been suppressing test availability the entire year. If we do get a season, I bet there will be times when teams have to practice before they get test results back due to delays.

But isn't the county over its listed population this time of year? Again, just grasping for anything

NBA isn't removing whole teams, that would never have been agreed upon. But they do have plans to isolate and replace positive players. Since they are testing daily, any infection shouldn't get very far. The nightmare scenario is an infected guy gets into a game, like if he tests negative but then the virus becomes contagious that same day. We'll see soon enough

Dallas Co two straight days with modest drops in cases (1201 - 1164 - 1101). Grasping for anything here

Let's call it what it is -- a simple way to buy some time when it became obvious no one is kicking off on Sept. 5. They'll look at the virus numbers again in a couple weeks, which will probably be coming under control but still way too high to start the 6-week countdown to a season.