Written by Nicholas Vetrisek
Recently, San Diego State University professor Peter C. Herman wrote an article in Times of San Diego claiming that allowing college football during the pandemic is racist towards Black people. The argument is as follows: the players will be in contact with each other and there will be many infections. These infections would in theory result in many hospitalizations and deaths.
The truth is that SDSU athletes are at extremely low risk of suffering severely from COVID-19. They could potentially be infected, but their lives are not in significant danger. The only people truly at risk of being severely affected or killed by the virus are either incredibly unhealthy or elderly. Not only are college athletes young, but they are also easily in the top one percent of health and overall physicality.
In addition, the Times of San Diego piece isn’t exactly coming from a qualified expert, as the author is a literature professor at SDSU. He is a self-proclaimed “expert on Shakespeare and Milton.” To my knowledge, there are no mentions of racism towards African Americans in any of Shakespeare’s works and there are no epidemiology classes in a literature Ph.D. In other words, this is yet another phony spouting off on issues he knows nothing about—which is a pandemic in its own right.
Herman’s argument is complete nonsense because it’s not meant to be taken seriously. When you need legal advice, you don’t go to your physics teacher, and naturally, it’s equally ridiculous to listen to advice on racial justice and preventing the spread of COVID-19 from a literature professor. This is merely a case of the arrogance of the intellectual.
Would stopping football slow the spread of the virus? Maybe. It would only stop a handful of cases at best and would do nothing given that most of the cases come from large crowds at protests and bars, not from playing outdoor sports. Very little—if any—containment would happen, meanwhile, the racism argument is completely laughable.
These are the types of fools that prevent things from getting done. They cloud and obscure the issue until it’s just noise and no one knows what’s true or false.
