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The Morning Stake | 2020.04.09

The Morning Stake
Seth C

The Morning Stake | 2020.04.09

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I am not trying to fear-monger, but this is a huge what-if and should be taken with a grain of salt. Just as much as anything that goes the opposite direction should also be taken with a grain of salt (i.e. anyone that thinks college sports might start in May — they might, but don’t hold your breath). SI’s Ross Dellenger and Pat Forde talk to administrators and insiders about what would happen if there was no football or a delay of football:

Industry executives are already creating contingency plans for a nuclear fall of no football. At Clemson, for instance, Dan Radakovich has commissioned a handful of associates to investigate the what-ifs, calling it a disaster-preparedness committee. “I don’t know that we’ve named it,” he says, “because I don’t have an acronym for doom.”

For years, top-level programs have bathed in cash. They’ve erected lavish facilities, signed coaches to multimillion-dollar contracts and massively increased athletic staff sizes. Revenues have never been greater, giving is at an all-time high and, while attendance has shown a steady decline, premium seating and TV money are taking off. But the gravy train has hit a snag. If it leads to a major downturn in the college football economy, then what? “We’re all effed,” says one Power 5 athletic director who wished to remain anonymous. “There’s no other way to look at this, is there?”

A total or partial loss of the sport could send some athletic departments so deep into the red that one administrator predicted even Power 5 football programs shuttering. But the absence of football is only one piece. The long-term and severe financial impacts from an economic recession could not only reform forever how departments operate but also could spell sweeping changes to the landscape of college athletics—from the formation of a super division to a new wave of conference realignment, from money-saving travel modifications to football scheduling alterations, from discontinued sports to thousands of lost jobs.

The article itself goes into four main questions that are worth your time:

Over the last two weeks, about two dozen school administrators and a host of industry experts spoke to Sports Illustrated to answer four pressing college sports questions amid the coronavirus pandemic: 1) When can on-campus practice begin? 2) What are the options for a football season? 3) How significant is football to athletic departments? 4) And how would athletic departments recover from a loss in football revenue? “The discussion that ADs are having about fall sports being canceled is a very real possibility,” says Ramogi Huma, the president of the National College Players Association. “It’s extremely hard to imagine any football in the fall on any level.”

Need some good news? Via Arrowhead Pride, former Red Raider footballer and running back DeAndre Washington has signed a one-year deal with the Kansas City Chiefs and now is reunited with Touchdown Boy Patrick Mahomes.

What an honor for pitcher Erin Edmoundson. Congrats!

Avalanche-Journal’s Don Williams continues his conversation with Texas Tech head baseball coach Tim Tadlock and he says that 2021 could be one of the most talented teams, but may not be as crisp as he’d like. The good thing is that everyone will be in the same position and fans will be so sports-starved that I don’t know how much it will matter:

On the surface, then, it’s easy to be bullish on the quality of college baseball in 2021.

“It’s easy to say that, but what if we don’t play baseball ’til next spring?” Tadlock said during an hour-long interview with A-J Media. “I could make an argument on the other side of that: It might be sloppier.”

If this were a normal year, the Red Raiders would be gearing up to play their fourth Big 12 series this weekend, hosting Oklahoma. Instead, players are mostly scattered with limited options for staying sharp.

Want something fun but profane? Me too. The earliest known use of the f-word was in 1568 by . . . two Scottish guys having basically a rap battle, two poets making fun of each other, via Open Culture:

The Bannatyne Manuscript and “wan fukkit funling” (whose appearance you can see in the image at the top of the post, in the sixth line from the bottom) play an important part in the new BBC Scotland documentary Scotland – Contains Strong Language. The hour-long program, writes The Scotsman’s Brian Ferguson, “sees actress, singer and theatre-maker Cora Bissett trace the nation’s long love affair with swearing and insults, despite the long-standing efforts of religious leaders to condemn it as a sin.” Ferguson quotes Bissett describing the importance of this particular “flyting” (“the 16th century equivalent of a rap battle”) as follows: “When Kennedy addresses Dunbar, there is the earliest surviving record of the word ‘f***’ in the world.”

“In the poem, Dunbar makes fun of Kennedy’s Highland dialect, for instance, as well as his personal appearance, and he suggests his opponent enjoys sexual intercourse with horses,” writes Ars Technica’s Jennifer Ouellette. “Kennedy retaliates with attacks on Dunbar’s diminutive stature and lack of bowel control, suggesting his rival gets his inspiration from drinking ‘frogspawn’ from the waters of a rural pond.” All highly amusing, to be sure, but given how few of us English-speakers will immediately recognize in “wan fukkit funling” the curse with which we’ve grown so intimately familiar, does this really count as an example of usage in English?

The Lady Raiders have their second transfer, freshman Nailah Dillard, announced that she’s transferring to Nebraska. Dillard averaged 3.6 points and 1.7 rebounds a game this past year. Good luck Nailah!

Here are some tweets.

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