The Big Ten is Acting Like a Child

 The Big Ten is Acting like a Child

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Think back to your days as an imaginative kid, maybe playing a concocted board game with your siblings or something in your backyard you made up with your friends. Since you created it, you control the rules, so once you started to fall behind you miraculously remember a ridiculous rule that helps you get ahead. 

That’s exactly what the Big Ten has done this football season, and unlike your time as a child, it’s not funny and there’s actually something at stake. The message the Big Ten is sending is a bad one to our young men and women, and it’s showing everyone who’s paying attention that it’s easier to change the rules to get ahead than it is to fight through adversity and overcome it. Shame on the Big Ten.

If you don’t already know what I’m referring to, the Big Ten has been inconsistent with its COVID rules this season, and it’s clearly to benefit the one team they have that can compete on the national level: Ohio State. After prematurely canceling the season, because the upper Midwest feels they have superior minds to those of us here in the South, the Big Ten finally realized their mistake just before football returned. As a sort of compromise, the conference and schools agreed to a number of COVID rules to ensure the safety of the children. While I don’t personally understand some of the rules, I won’t fault them for doing what they felt was best for the kids. 

Included in the set of rules was a 21-day removal from team activities with a confirmed positive test, and a minimum requirement of six regular season games to compete for the conference championship. From everything I’ve seen, every team in the conference followed the 21-day rule throughout the season without any question. The six-game-minimum was never questioned either until the Big Ten bell cow, Ohio State, fell under that requirement and was unable to compete for the title. Just like the child who made up a game and changed the rules to help himself win, the Big Ten changed its agreed rules to help Ohio State out. As expected, the Buckeyes won the game, but they did so without arguably their most important offensive player, WR Chris Olave, and a handful of others. These players missed the game due to a recent positive COVID result.

It is unclear when the tests were administered, but based on the majority of reports’ timelines these players would be unable to play in the upcoming national semi-final under the 21-day rule. Without surprise, and with the Big Ten’s only consistent team at a disadvantage, the conference doubled down on their rule-changing ways and amended the time a player must remain out to 17 days instead of 21. It is certainly no coincidence that the new 17-day timeline, not associated with any public health recommendation whatsoever, will allow all the infected players to return for the playoff. Once again, the Big Ten changed the rules to help their team out, when every other team in their conference suffered because they played by the rules. It’s worth mentioning the COVID rules were determined by conference, which was the right decision because each region was impacted differently. However, no other conference changed their rules to accommodate any team.

This “change the rules as you go” message is terrible to our young people. Instead of teaching them to fight through the challenges and overcome adversity, the Big Ten is telling its athletes that it’s easier to go around the problem than through it. The Big Ten is doing these kids a disservice- even if Ohio State wins a championship, the ends do not justify the means. And if you look back to our previous article on why the College Football Playoff needs to change, the selection committee is telling the young men of Cincinnati and Coastal Carolina, and in some ways Texas A&M, that their outstanding efforts weren’t good enough to overcome the Big Ten’s rule-changing ways.