Getting Smart

THE IVY LEAGUE is where intelligent people go to college, where intelligent lecturers give intelligent lectures, and apparently, where intelligent administrators make intelligent decisions concerning whether to proceed with football and other fall sports in the midst of a deadly epidemic.Ergo, the ivy League was the first major athletic conference to do the intelligent thing and cancel football and all other sports this fall. The Big Ten and PAC Twelve, with only slightly less academic prestige and intelligence, followed suit soon thereafter,  and the only hold out are the Big Ten, the ACC, and the SEC, all of evidently somewhat less intelligence. One might even anticipate an autumn in which all college football all across America's fruited plain in canceled for 2020, except in the Southeastern conference, firmly ensconced in the south and southern culture. The SEC will try to carry on with blocking, tackling, punting common sense, and spreading disease. In the south, college football is a religion. In the south, funerals and weddings are not on the schedule for Saturdays  in the fall. Surely by now, five full months into the great pandemic, it is apparent that Covid 19 is not going away, now or ever, without deliberate, sustained, intelligent human intervention. that is what has been and continues to be lacking in these United States of Avarice, where we refuse to entirely dispense with fun and freedom for even the comparatively short time it would take to whip the bug. It will be a miracle if there are any complete football seasons this fall, high school, college, pro, or pee wee. And, it would be a miracle if there are any more intelligent decisions made about the matter, if high school and college football and especially pro football is put on hold without a thorough attempt to avoid doing so. wonders, it seems, never cease, one way or the other.