Henry “Hank” Aaron passed on the morning of Jan. 22, 2021. Mr. Aaron is renowned in the Atlanta and American sports community for his unparalleled playing career and also for being a civil rights activist during and after his playing days. He started playing for the Braves while they were still located in Milwaukee in 1954 and remained with the team after they moved to Atlanta in 1966, playing through the 1974 season. His last two seasons in 1975 and ‘76 were back in Milwaukee with the newly formed Brewers organization. The beginning of his professional baseball career began in the Negro Leagues, playing for the Indianapolis Clowns. He was the final Negro League player to retire from Major League Baseball.

Statistically, Mr. Aaron is one of the all time titans of baseball. Over a 23 year playing career in the outfield, Mr. Aaron reached 25 straight All-Star Games, two were played per season from 1959-1962, became and still is the all-time leader in runs batted in and total bases and won the 1957 MVP award. He was part of the only Milwaukee Braves team to win the World Series, and in that same season, he hit .393 with 3 home runs in the postseason. He was Major League leader in runs twice, in hits twice, in home runs once, in RBI’s four times, in batting average twice, in slugging three times and in total bases four times. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982 along with Frank Robinson, Travis Jackson, and Happy Chandler. He received the ninth-highest percentage of votes for an inductee, second-most at the time behind Ty Cobb. He would be an instrumental part of the Braves organization for the rest of his life, including being one deciding to draft future Hall of Famer Chipper Jones.

Mr. Aaron during his career stood in a place no other athlete had before; a Black professional athlete in the deep south. Even though Jackie Robinson broke the Major League Baseball color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers, playing in New York City was an incredibly different place to play compared to Atlanta in the 1950s and 1960s. Society was in many ways different,and similar too, when it came to how sports was seen and fit. The South did not have a person with an Arthur Blank kind of wealth to fund a professional team for a long time, nor did it have a city until Atlanta in the 1960s that could support a team like New York or Boston could. Major League Baseball was hard to interact with beyond the newspaper in the south, since they weren’t in range of local TV broadcasts and could only sometimes get radio broadcasts, mainly from St. Louis. Mr. Aaron was in a way part of a trail-blazing path to establish professional sports in the south and also professional Black athleticism.

Mr. Aaron had established his credibility and stature in baseball by the time he came to Atlanta by winning the MVP and World Series during his years in Milwaukee. He was also one of the elite sports idols for kids growing up at the time and one of the first that was southern based, coming from Alabama and eventually playing in Atlanta. His demeanor and tone during a tumultuous time in race relations as a prominent Black athlete never wavered. “What you saw was what you got,” said Emory Professor Hank Klibanoff in an interview about Aaron. “He never did anything to shake the idea as an eight year old what a hero should be.”

His chase for the, at the time, record-breaking 715th career home run, also came with a torrent of hate mail and death threats he received because he was a Black man going for a prestigious record held by a white man, Babe Ruth (who coincidentally finished his career as a Brave). According to the United States Postal Service, in 1974, Aaron received 900,000 pieces of correspondence, of which about a third “were letters of hate engendered by his bettering of Babe Ruth’s record.”

It is a miraculous feat of human emotional strength and endurance that Mr. Aaron had to battle through while going for the home run record, especially for the most famous record in the most popular American sport at the time.

His attainment of that record was not only a personal accomplishment for Aaron, but a tremendous win of sorts for the civil rights movement, proving the standards of equality had been and still were unequivocally broken for Black Americans. The fact Aaron remained as level headed as he did is truly remarkable, and a testament to how great a man he was.

Mr. Aaron’s famed legacy will perpetually live on in that home run, his nickname “The Home Run King,” but also in his stature as a crucial civil rights icon for Atlanta, the south, Major League Baseball, and American society as a whole.

Mr. Aaron’s jersey number, “44,” has been retired by the Atlanta Braves since 1977, and by the Milwaukee Brewers since 1976. For the coming 2021 seasons, Atlanta United, the Atlanta Falcons and Georgia Tech football have all announced they will be retiring #44. The Atlanta Hawks have already retired #44 for “Pistol” Pete Maravich.

A televised memorial service was held for Mr. Aaron on Tuesday at Truist Park, where Braves legends and Commissioner Rob Manfred spoke.

Justifying going to a bad team’s football games is not always an easy process. Having seen the crowds at Bobby Dodd during my four football seasons a Tech has shown that to be true. Seeing a team that knows it’s in the middle of a rebuild is easy to pass on when better days are ahead.

That’s where the magic of senior Pressley Harvin III’s right foot comes in. These days of many three and outs, stifled runs and incomplete passes always came with the promise we would see a feat of nature at the end of the drive. The main piece written by Will goes over all the numerics of just how impressive Harvin III consistently was, and the eye test 100% backs it up.

Nearly every punt was something worth cheering for, both for the on field result and just the impressiveness of how high the ball would go. Tech missed out on a great opportunity to get a CS class to create a ball height tracker that would do live readings to everyone in Bobby Dodd just how high his punts would go. As sad a statement as this is, some of the best spirals Tech launched in the last few seasons came off Harvin III’s foot. I never actually tried this, but I bet you would be able to hear the ball come off Pressley’s foot from outside the stadium.

Pressley made showing up to games worth it. The friends I go to games with were always most excited for when we knew a Pressley punt was coming.

Plenty of games we knew a blowout was on the horizon, but that meant Pressley action that we had to see.

I fully expect to see him playing on Sundays doing the same thing he always does.

Tech accomplished a new first on Nov 25, playing it’s first basketball game during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the women’s team taking on the Georgia State Panthers from down Marietta Street. While many parts of the experience were (hopefully) temporarily different, it was still refreshing to be able to take in some live sports in person. 

Differences started appearing from the moment people walked up to McCamish Pavilion. The old student entrance is now the media/staff entrance, so students enter through the main entrance at the corner of Fowler and 10th. Masks were required, the giveaway table had a plastic barrier with an opening at the bottom for the giveaway (a tumbler for this game) to be distributed to each student. Sanitizing stations were aplenty on the concourse. The pep band and cheerleading crew were spaced out in the usual student sections, with both contingencies much smaller than usual. Team benches and the scorers table now occupied where the student courtside section used to be. The usual scorers table now served as a seating area for security and staff. Any unused seats were locked with zip ties.

Even with the newness of it all, the basketball was unchanged and as fun as it always is. Georgia State won the opening tip to start off what would be a very sloppy quarter for both teams. Airballs were shot by both teams, Georgia State was able to get a couple open threes off but couldn’t find the rim. A quarter of Tech’s 12 points were via free throws in the first quarter. Tech was also finding open shots and getting good outlet passes, but not everything was clicking fast enough to get easy shots at the rim. This was not surprising for the first game of the season.

In the second quarter, the Jackets took control of the game. Junior transfer Lotta-Maj Lahtinen sparked the offense by speeding up the ball movement to create a ton of great shots for herself. The whole offense moved around her and the Panthers didn’t have an answer. Lahtinen had two steals within a minute, the second one leading to a layup for senior Lorela Cubaj that would jumpstart a scoring run that effectively locked up the game. Lahtinen would make three of the next four Jacket buckets, aided by Tech’s first three pointer of the game by redshirt junior Sarah Bates. The defense got tougher in the lane and kept the Panthers to only 8 points in the second quarter, putting the Jackets up 28-13 at halftime with no discernable momentum shift that could give the Panthers any breathing room to come back.

Georgia State posed the biggest threat in the third quarter despite it being Tech’s highest scoring quarter. The Panthers did much better blocking the lane and getting free throws. The quarter as a whole was rugged and could’ve been further exploited by the Panthers, but Tech kept making shots when they needed it, led by freshman Loyal McQueen and Cubaj. Lahtinen was on the floor for most of the third quarter and added two assists, both to Cubaj. 

Tech entered the fourth quarter up 20 points and cruised through the last ten minutes of the game with ease. Bates kicked off the quarter with her third three pointer of the game, and Lahtinen knocked down a jumper on their next possession. Both teams had a scoring drought that lasted until the middle of the quarter. GSU finished the game with a trio of three pointers by Taniyah Worth, Moriah Taylor, and Kamryn Dziak, leading to a final score of 62-38.

Lahtinen, Bates, and McQueen all finished with over 12 points. Lahtinen was the only Jacket with a double-double, grabbing 10 rebounds, second on the team to Cubaj’s 14. Cubaj was one bucket away from a double-double of her own. Even with the Panthers leading the free throw battle early, the Jackets ended up with a higher percentage of 55% to Georgia State’s 42.9%.

Tech football is going through a complete rebuilding process. A decade of the Paul Johnson triple-option offense shaped one of the most unique identities in college football, which at its best netted an Orange Bowl victory in 2014 over Mississippi State and current Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott. It was built around a hard-to-track run game that was predictably unpredictable on every play, dependent on the ability to exploit holes created by the offensive line. This meant if Tech had a good offensive line, the team was likely good. If the offensive line was overmatched in size and speed, it would be a rough day. It was an offensive style fully dependent on size and speed, with the occasional trick pass.

Paul Johnson’s retirement brought what probably was a much needed change to the team’s identity on the national landscape, especially with a significant number of games happening in Tech’s backyard at Mercedes Benz Stadium, including the SEC Championship Game and the Peach Bowl. Atlanta is the center of college football, so it shouldn’t be unfair to expect that the premier university in the city be somewhat competitive in a Power 5 conference, regardless of our academic expectations.

Enter Geoff Collins, former defensive coordinator at Temple, former Tech recruiter, and former resident of Columbia Drive in Decatur. We knew the offense was going to take a couple seasons at least to adjust to Collins’ pro style offense. Defense, on the other hand, was Collins’ strong suit, and the main piece of the admittedly work-in-progress football team that should have shown life the quickest.

Collins received a mulligan for last season, as many of Paul Johnson’s players were still on the roster. The 2020 season has its own pandemic sized asterisk, but it was the first where Collins got to recruit his own players and also the first with a full offseason for Collins. Theoretically, the defense should be in a better place, or at least showing signs of improvement with maturity.

Tech’s season opener against Florida State gave the impression that the defense was making these steps. FSU only scored 13 points at Doak-Campbell with 307 yards of total offense. Since then, however, Tech has only beaten Louisville, and has given up some sizable point totals: 49 points to a strong UCF team, 37 points to an offensively abysmal Syracuse team, and 73 points to Clemson, notwithstanding Dabo Swinney’s insertion of his second-string offense early in the second half. Most recently, they allowed 48 points to Boston College, who has only scored 27.5 points per game this season. This puts Tech 92nd out of 101 playing FBS teams so far in points allowed per game at 41.2.

It is fair to point out that freshman quarterback Jeff Sims has been giving the defense no favors. He’s thrown 10 interceptions to only 8 touchdowns, and has not shown impressive ball security, putting the defense on the field more than they should be.

Regardless, Tech’s performance on the defensive end of the ball is concerning. No team can expect to put up even a .500 season without showing some strength on defense, especially in a Power 5 conference. Admittedly, the Clemson game was a mismatch from the beginning, as receivers were left open the entire game. Boston College and Syracuse, however, were disappointing to say the least. Both games got out of hand very quickly – last week’s game was essentially over by halftime.

Tech is donning the Black Watch defense throwback jerseys against Notre Dame. While it’s meant to be honorary, the irony cannot be ignored that a defensively minded team is not pulling its weight. Defensive coordinator Andrew Thacker’s unit needs to do a better job of giving the team a fighting chance.

There’s only a few things I like more than listening to live music. It’s one of those things you just have to see in person to keep your spirit fresh and renewed.

It is an art piece unfolding before your eyes and ears that can be so many things, but at its core revolves around usually the same thing: a drum beat and a guitar. It is different for everyone, but it’s never left me going, “Eh, whatever.”

Live bands, especially ones playing big venues, are curating their shows every night to be an experience that is best when consumed in full.

There is a reason for the beginning, middle and end of a show, and how they order their songs.

There are stories being told, emotions being brought to the forefront, skills being demonstrated, all for the sole purpose of creating an experience for the listener that brings an infusion of life.

The next best thing in COVID times to replicate that isn’t a YouTube video of an old show (although I have done that many times), it is the physical vinyl experience of an album. It is intentionally choosing how you want to spend your time digesting an artist’s work in a setting they know people seek out.

I have spent all of my life a music fan. My dad ran a music magazine called Paste in the 2000’s and brought in tons of great music that shaped my development in many crucial ways.

My siblings and I were religious Sugarland and U2 fans (still are) at the earliest I can remember. We were Brandi Carlile fans way before it was cool. We had songs from The Jayhawks’ “Rainy Day Music” album memorized by age six.

I have been to upwards of 400 individual sets of music in my life. My iTunes in middle school boasted over 50,000 songs that I inherited from the Paste collections.

But yet, even in the absolute nerdfest that was my music hobby, it was high school before I even knew what vinyl was, or knew how it worked.

My entire livelihood of music was streaming, CD, or live. I had no real understanding of the vinyl “method” per se of listening to music, an ironic scenario considering my dad grew up on vinyl, ran a music magazine, but we never had a record player.

So, being one who saw the next step in my hobby, as well as the comeback of vinyl seriously making headway (vinyl now outsells CD’s), I made my dive into vinyl. Every Record Store Day I would walk to Sunbrimmer Records (R.I.P.) in Avondale Estates, GA where I lived to acquire a new record, usually a U2 or Bruce Springteen.

Beach trips to 30-A required a trip to Central Square Records at Seaside, FL.

I do this now because listening to vinyl in full is one of the best ways to respect the design and intentions of an album.

That means the album cover, the artwork in the sleeves, the track order, the liner notes, all of it is there to be appreciated as a unit in a particular way.

Streaming is convenient and mobile, but vinyl is a real commitment and an experience that can be shared.

Every time I put a record on in my house, I have my housemates in mind.
I have the mood in mind. I have what I want the record to accomplish in mind.

The need to flip the record to get to all the songs creates an intentional engagement with the music.

You literally have to hold it in your hands to get to all the songs.

It’s tactile. It’s a privilege to get to be the one to flip a record, not because I’m the one in control, but because it creates anticipation and creates an intentional pause in the record that in a way, I get to play.

I become part of the album in those 15 seconds it takes to flip and place the needle down.

When I’m doing that with people, it’s an event.

Offering to let someone do the record flip with one of my records is one of those simple things that is always thrilling for the person who gets to flip, especially when it’s their first time.

It may be an “ancient” way of listening to music, but it’s a tremendously rich way to do so.

Listening to a vinyl record is huge for community building.

At my house, we use vinyl to set a vibe we want depending on if we are studying, hosting a small number of friends, or just chilling after a day of work.

It accomplishes at being a scaled down version of a concert because it is a chosen experience, it has a design unlike the shuffle button, and is always better with other people in the room to listen with.

So, when thinking about music you love, buying the vinyl is a great option.

It’s also more profitable for the artists than streaming payouts from Spotify.

But, it also gives you a physical token reminding you why you like a band so much.

Plus, you can’t get an audio wave signed on Spotify, but you can always get the vinyl signed!

This past Thursday, the Atlanta Braves won their first playoff series since 2001. I’ve been waiting for that day since I was two, and I did not even know it. Braves fans have been carrying 25 years of emotional baggage surrounding the team’s playoff history since their last (and only) World Series title, and neither of us have been alive for that whole stretch. Getting through this series was critical for the fanbase to not experience another bad playoff loss, especially in a year where many feel the team is capable of winning the World Series.

Last year was the first time the team had a real shot of making headway in the postseason since the early 2000’s. The team had won its second consecutive NL East title, proving the first one was not a fluke, and had a much improved lineup, reinforcing Ronald Acuña Jr. and Freddie Freeman with free agent pickup Josh Donaldson.

However, this theoretically stronger lineup posted a whimsical .225 batting average in the five-game National League division series loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, with Donaldson and Freeman both hitting under .200. It was later revealed that Freddie had bone spurs in his right elbow, which was causing discomfort and inhibiting his swing. Donaldson signed with the Minnesota Twins after the season.

Enter the 2020 season. The Braves replaced Donaldson with one of the Braves’ nemeses from the Cardinals NLDS team, Marcell Ozuna, Freeman had surgery on his elbow and entered camp healthier than ever, and veteran starter Cole Hamels was added to the starting rotation.

All of that was almost thrown out the window when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and player compensation issues arose over the shortened season, but in the end we got a 60-game season with multiple rule changes and an expanded playoffs.

A short season could have meant anything in terms of record, but it demanded that the Braves’ best players have consistent and high output seasons to be relevant.

Multiple players did so, saving a season that could have been in serious trouble when the team lost four of their five original starting pitchers. For the first time since Chipper Jones in 1999, the Braves might have an MVP winner in Freddie Freeman. Freeman finished the season first or second in WAR (position players), OBP, slugging %, OPS, runs and extra base hits. This was after he had a severe bout with COVID-19 before the season started.

On top of that, Freeman was not the Brave who was a few hits away from winning the triple crown (Marcell Ozuna), was not the Brave who was arguably the best hitter at his position all year (Adam Duvall), and wasn’t one of the Braves with a three-homer game this season (Duvall and Ozuna, multiple times).

In other words, the Braves were already really powerful this season on offense, and Freeman still led the charge through all 60 games.

Having a guy like Freeman is critical to feeling like the Braves are a complete team.

He is the spiritual successor to Chipper in terms of being the foundation of the franchise. Everything is built around him being the leader in the clubhouse and the most reliable player on the team.

The Braves have had a hump they could never get over with teams that made the playoffs since 2001. In the early 2000s, it was a team that was losing its strength in a weak division, and got lucky in 2005 with the Baby Braves.

Every playoff team after that never had the firepower or emotional fortitude to be a team the fanbase was confident in to be a championship team.

There would be silly mistakes, blown saves, untimely cold streaks at the plate, abysmal umpiring (looking at you, Sam Holbrook), or just running into better teams. There was never a team that could just get the job done when it needed to.

This year’s team finally got over this hump in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series against the Reds. The pitchers duel between Cincinnati’s Trevor Bauer and Atlanta’s Max Fried was the kind we would be prone to losing — the kind of game previous teams never had the guts to pull out. This game somehow lasted 13 innings, and Freeman won it with the kind of clutch at-bat that has often been missing in the past. Faced with a 1-2 count, Freddie was extra patient, didn’t force anything, and looped a line drive into center field to drive in the only run of the game. It was the type of effort our playoff teams have not made in a what seems like a long time.

On Aug. 17, Tech alum and Israeli Olympic swimmer Gal Nevo was one of the seven members inducted into Georgia Tech’s Athletic Hall of Fame. “He [Mike Stamus] reached out and wanted to have a conversation,” said Nevo in his exclusive interview with the Technique, “And my initial thought is ‘Oh, well they heard about my startup and wanted me to donate as an alum.’ It was a five minute conversation and I was like, wow.”

Nevo swam in three Olympic Games in Beijing (2008), London (2012) and Rio de Janeiro (2016) for Israel, swimming Individual Medley and Butterfly events.

While at Tech, he was a four time All-American, five time ACC champion, and still holds the school record in the 400 Individual Medley. Despite never medaling in the Olympics, he does hold the Israeli records for the 200 Individual Medley, 400 Individual Medley, and 200 Butterfly, all of which are some of the most physically taxing events on the body.

At the Olympic swim meet, the 400 IM is the first event on the schedule that swimmers medal in, and as of recently has been an event dominated by American swimmers at the Games.

At the London Games nine years ago Nevo was quite close to making the final in that event over legends Michael Phelps and Hungarian László Cseh. “[Phelps] swam super slow and basically swam [the same time as] László Cseh,” said Nevo, “[Phelps] was the last one into the finals.” Phelps would go on to finish 4th in that event, making it his first (and last) Olympic finals swim he did not medal in since his first Olympics as a 15 year old at the 2000 Sydney Games.

Nevo credits Phelps walking in the Opening Ceremonies and waving the flag for the American delegation for why he didn’t medal.

Nevo’s coach at Tech, Stu Wilson, was a big part of why he wanted to come to Tech. “We heard a lot of good things about him,” he said, “Especially from other Israeli swimmers. I wanted to start at Georgia Tech, but Stu only offered a basic scholarship.” He eventually transferred over to Tech for the 2008-2009 season after a couple of years at ASU.

Wilson left the team after Nevo’s first season at Tech, a year where he posted the second fastest 400 IM in NCAA history at the time. After Wilson left, Nevo credits assistant coach Mark Tuberin: “These people really, really made the difference.”

What might be enlightening but not surprising to Tech students is that the work ethic the student body is known for applies to the swim team as well.

“The team is very different from your typical top college teams,” said Nevo, “There’s a Hebrew saying ‘living in a movie’ which is like living in some kind of fantasy. [For swimming it’s like] you know, ‘we’re gonna win championships. We’re gonna get top ten!’ It’s dream and reality, a huge difference you can’t take seriously.”

This is coming from a guy who has made three Olympic games, so he knows what the dream is. He has achieved top 10 worldwide in an Olympic event. He has seen the athletes from small nations who are in awe of the Olympic Village and the unlimited Big Macs available for athletes.

“I think what’s special about Tech is that because it’s such an academically hard school, everyone is more down to earth. Everybody has dreams and aspires to get better, but … they know they’re going to come to Tech both to work hard in the classroom … and in the pool.”

While this is not news to anyone that has spent any time attending or teaching at the Institute, it is notable that this facet of Tech truly penetrates every area of student life on campus.

“Once I came to Arizona State, everything [was] the same and you get the same kind of people. But I really like [Tech’s] atmosphere of just, you know, do the hard work, have realistic dreams that you aspire to. That creates better dynamics, in my point of view.”

After his swimming career ended, Nevo began a startup called Senswim. He says it’s the “first video analysis system for swimming that is free of any wearable devices.

It gives real time feedback to swimmers and coaches about several metrics such as time, strokes, underwater, dive, distance, and hopefully more metrics soon.”

Senswim is the only company to ever establish a product with these kinds of stats without requiring a sensor of some kind that a swimmer would wear on their wrist or ankle. It’s a huge help for coaches, who could have a reliable system to track times without using a handheld stopwatch. One could even theoretically use security camera footage to make it work.

“I think for everyone, not just athletes, what you eventually want to have more than achievements is just appreciation.”

While usually the new class of the Athletic Hall of Fame are introduced on Grant Field during a home football game, this year’s class will be introduced alongside the 2021 class next season.

Even though we cannot fathom a fall in Atlanta without throngs of people attending games at Bobby-Dodd, our beloved college football season, like everything else right now, might not be happening at all. 

Back in March, the idea that football would be in jeopardy was definitely a possibility, but not on the forefront of the sports world. Since then, every major American sports league that was in season or still needing to complete a season has returned. The NFL is the only league that hasn’t played during the pandemic and still plans on playing its regular season.

College football though, is a whole separate matter. The debate over whether it should go on as usual has been prolific over the past month. A huge contributing factor to the indecision is because college football does not have one authoritative body to make decisions about health protocols, roster composition, scheduling, etc. 

Those decisions are down to the individual conferences. As of now, only two of the Power 5 conferences — the Big Ten and Pac-12 — have said they are not playing this fall. The ACC, SEC and Big 12 are still planning on playing. The College Football Playoff has also said they plan to maintain the semi-finals and national championship in their normal New Year’s time-frame. 

There have been some opt-outs, but a significant majority of players want to play and, in the case of Tech, have been practicing all summer. Multiple big name players have been extremely vocal about playing, notably Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State transfer quarterback, Justin Fields. 

#WeWantToPlay began making the rounds over the last week on Twitter amongst players and celebrities, including figures such as Shaquille O’Neal. Lawrence said in a tweet thread, “People are just as much, if not more at risk, if we don’t play. Players will all be sent home to their own communities where social distancing is highly unlikely and medical care and expenses will be placed on the families if they were to contract COV-ID-19.” 

He went on to mention that for many of the players, being under the care of their college programs is a far safer and more stable situation compared to their homes. Others have pointed out that players will be far more likely to be careful if they need to stay healthy for games. 

On Sunday, Fields started an online petition asking the Big Ten’s Commissioner, Presidents and Athletic Directors to reverse their decision on cancelling the fall season, following the same line of reasoning as Lawrence. As of Monday afternoon, the petition had over 240,000 signatures. 

The players’ insistence on playing is significant because as of now, they do not have a say in the decision. This has not formerly been a capacity they have needed to operate in. There is no player’s union for college athletes like there is in the professional leagues. There is no such thing as hazard pay for college athletes, because they are all considered student-athletes. 

Every athlete participating in the NCAA does not have bargaining power for what happens this year. Obviously they can make their voices heard to their athletic directors, coaches and presidents, but it does not guarantee anything for them. The chain of command for college football lacks a single person whose job only concerns football, and who has the power to say whether their team will play during this pandemic or not. 

And assuming that games will happen, there are still looming health concerns. Even before we just learned that Tech is planning on allowing 11,000 fans for home games, it is reasonable to be worried about the network effects of football games happening outside of the stadium. 

People will still gather at homes for watch parties and tailgates will still be happening. Football has the tendency to bring large groups of people together, especially in the south, and this is probably not a good thing for the fight against the novel coronavirus that we are currently engaged in.

The onus of this mess, therefore, is on the NCAA. If the players had been granted an official voice in some manner, their demands and opinions would have much more weight in the decision making process for whether to play or not. 

The fact that Fields, who holds a position in American sports that any football player would dream of, is resorting to an online petition to make his case to the NCAA and Big Ten is appalling at best. The players are the ones that have to play in the first place, and under pandemic conditions, bear the biggest risk of contracting the virus since they are in each other’s faces on every play. 

The inherent unfairness is unquestionable. If ever there was a time to instigate a change in the power structure of college football, it has to be now.