Greed extended its remarkable winning streak on Wednesday as the Big Ten announced that football will resume conference-wide starting on Oct. 23.
“It is my great honor to have helped!!!” tweeted Greed’s owner and President of the United States Donald J. Trump early Wednesday morning. According to Trump, he helped lay the groundwork for the victory two weeks ago when he took a more hands-on approach and developed a game plan with head coach Kevin Warren. Being the commissioner of the Big Ten, Warren was in a prime position to leverage the Big Ten against Science. Trump saw this opportunity and helped Warren exploit it.
Not everyone agrees with this characterization. An anonymous player on the team and Big Ten president insists that “President Trump had nothing to do with our decision and did not impact the deliberations. In fact, when his name came up, it was a negative because no one wanted this to be political.”
But four cheerleaders for Greed—professional gasbags Clay Travis and Will Cain, United States Representative Jim Jordan, and nepotism-hire Donald Trump Jr.—insist that Trump had an important role in swaying Warren and getting the win. And, while he didn’t comment on Trump’s involvement, Greed water boy and Maryland governor Larry Hogan seemed equally excited by the team’s performance.
The latest victory—a 69-0 blowout against Science—came just one day after the team’s razor-thin 13-10 victory against Entropy in which Greed’s defensive coordinator and LSU head coach Ed Orgeron almost lost the game by being “a bit too transparent.”
“Our goal has always been to return to competition so all student-athletes can realize their dream of competing in the sports they love,” said Warren in the Big Ten announcement. Indeed, the fulfillment of student-athlete dreams is a hallmark strategy in Greed’s offensive game plan, which ultimately revolves around making money: As recently as 2018, the Big Ten yielded $759 million in revenue for Greed from televising college football games.
Less than a month ago, Warren wrote an open letter to the Big Ten community after Greed lost its Aug. 11 contest against Science. In it, Warren argued that Science won because COVID-19 transmission rates were rising at an “alarming rate,” other students on Big Ten campuses could infect athletes when the fall semester started, there was “simply too much we [did] not know about the virus,” and there were “concerns surrounding contract tracing” including not being able to fully implement risk mitigation in contact sports and not having access to accurate tests both for athletes and for student bodies at large.
So what changed in the last month in the battle against Science?
Ironically, Greed has become more willing to combat Science by making Big Ten football a science experiment. From the aforementioned Big Ten statement, the conference suggests that it will now maintain “a cardiac registry in an effort to examine the effects on COVID-19 positive student-athletes. The registry and associated data will attempt to answer many of the unknowns regarding the cardiac manifestations in COVID-19 positive elite athletes.”
Camouflaging risking the health of student-athletes as science is an ingenious way to subvert Science and a relatively new wrinkle in the Greed offense. Straw man logical fallacies, however, compose a tried-and-true package Greed breaks out when its offense is in a rhythm. Even still, these strategies pale in comparison to another hallmark of the Greed offense: attacking women with dissenting opinions on Twitter.
Quarterback and Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh summarized Greed’s mantra after the game: “Stay positive. Test negative. Let’s play football.”
But it may not be so simple.
Remember the narrow victory against Entropy earlier this week? After that contest, Orgeron explained the mechanics of beating the relentless opponents this fall: “We talk to [LSU football players] about being very, very careful so they’re eligible for games. We know that with the players haven’t caught it, we have to have some backups in their position ready in case they catch it.” While Orgeron primarily watches over the Greed defense (the SEC), it’s reasonable to believe the Greed offense (the Big Ten) will see similar struggles moving forward.
Per the Big Ten announcement, “total population[s] at risk” surrounding football teams need COVID-19 rates below 7.5% in order for their respective teams to play this season. Given that over 88,000 students at over 1,190 colleges have gotten COVID-19 since the beginning of the fall semester, this seems like a tall order. However, this is another example of science beating Science.
While the Big Ten announcement gives targets for infection rates both among football teams and general populations, it never defines what “total population at risk” means. To boot, it does not address a situation in which the total population has an infection rate above 7.5% but the team only has an infection rate below 2%. On top of that, the announcement doesn’t seem to care what happens if any player develops serious health issues.
If these omissions are on purpose, Greed is simply demonstrating its genius in its ability to generate smoke and mirrors with science that distracts from Science. If they’re by accident, well, that just points to two other weapons in the Greed arsenal: ignorance and haste.
Stay positive. Test negative. Let’s play football.
If all goes according to plan, Greed should be able to continue its run in the coming weeks as the college football season rounds into form. Work stoppages, game postponements, and player opt-outs are just bumps in the road for the religious experience that is the college football season. With the Big Ten back in play, who knows how far Greed will go this year.
After all, a lot can happen in a month.
If you want to hold bad actors accountable, consider supporting these goats.
23,684 Americans have died due to COVID-19 since Kevin Warren wrote an open letter to the Big Ten community saying the conference would not revisit the decision to postpone the football season.
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