My school made the right choice this year on college football

Editor’s note: We’re thrilled to welcome former Raleigh News & Observer columnist Barry Saunders as a member of the Editorial Board. Barry, who will be writing editorials and columns, is a long-time favorite of N&O readers for his sharp eye and thoughtful wit. We’re fans, too, and we’re delighted he’s joining us.

Peering through the fence at Morehouse College’s football team as the players slammed into each other on the dusty practice field next to the gym, I turned to a professor standing next to me and sniffed - with the know-it-all arrogance that only a 21-year-old Morehouse Man can - “Hmmph. That’s supposed to build character?”

The professor replied: “If you want it to.”

At the time, I was bitter because I’d just - we’re talking minutes earlier - gotten cut during the school’s basketball team tryouts. I was in no mood to watch others pursuing their dreams.

What I was in the mood for was a Moon Pie and, no longer having to worry about staying in shape for basketball, I stopped at the day-old bakery where they were cheapest and went home and ate eight of those bad boys.

That was 42 years ago, and eventually I realized two things:

First, that you shouldn’t eat eight Moon Pies at one time.

Second, I realized that the professor was right: football can build character, especially at a school such as Morehouse, where character is valued over your speed in the 40-yard dash.

Morehouse’s character shone through brightly recently when the school became the first scholarship program in the country to cancel its football season because - get this - President David A. Thomas considered the health and welfare of his student/athletes more important than winning football games.

What in the name of “keeping things in perspective” is this?

No gridiron victory will ever make Morehouse alumni prouder than the administration’s decision not to play this year. Sure, the players are going to be disappointed, but they will one day see the wisdom of the decision.

How do I know?

I asked two of the players who were on the field that day in 1978 when I stood staring forlornly through the fence. Darryl Beasley was the quarterback known as “Silk” and Lloyd Edwards was a guard who blocked for him.

Beasley, vice president of sales for Green Line Business Group, said canceling the season “was the best decision that could be made based on the current pandemic forecast... I’m saddened, yet I’m pleased with the decision to put the health of our students and alumni ahead of any financial gain.”

Edwards, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate in Mathematics who is a professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, said the decision to cancel the season “increased my respect for the school’s leadership. Football players don’t operate in a vacuum. They have families they interact with, and many of those family members might be vulnerable to the virus.”

Since Morehouse canceled football, several other schools - as well as the CIAA and Ivy League - have done the same. Big-time college football programs are holding out, though, and watching them seek to justify playing games in the midst of a deadly pandemic gives you an idea what those schools prioritize.

Hint: it isn’t the players’ welfare.

Mike Gundy, the head football coach at Oklahoma State University, revealed his priorities in April when he said it was imperative to get the athletes back onto the field.

“They are 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22 years old, and they are healthy and they have the ability to fight this virus off. If that is true, then we sequester them and continue, because we need to run money through the state of Oklahoma.

“Everybody,” Gundy continued - ostensibly without bursting into flames or bursting out laughing at his own preposterous statement - “needs to see football.”

Translation: “I’m making enough money off these kids playin’ footbaw to keep my family in Vienna sausages for generations, and I’m not about to let some potentially deadly virus interfere with that.”

Still, here’s a begrudging tip o’ the helmet to Gundy for saying the quiet part out loud - that the well-being of the students who play football is secondary to “run(ning) money through the state of Oklahoma.”

It would actually be refreshing if more of these big-money conference coaches were honest about their feelings. Maybe then, as Silk Beasley said, more of these student/athletes would end up at schools such as Morehouse that won’t seek to put them on the field in the midst of a deadly pandemic.

This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 12:05 PM.