No rush to decide fate of sports as we don’t know what we don’t know

With “corona fatigue” starting to sweep across the country, predictions about our fate seem to change multiple times daily and sports fans are almost at the point of desperation to find out something.

That’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.

“We just gotta wait and see what happens,” WatchStadium.com college football analyst Brett McMurphy said Thursday afternoon with Derek Ruscin and Zach Arns (Ruscin & Zach) on ESPN Arkansas.

In other words, sports fans, none of us really have a clue what’s going to happen or when it’s going to happen.

Granted, in Arkansas we haven’t had mandatory shut-down orders. There’s been some suggestions and guidance but by and large the good citizens have been allowed to decide what risk is comfortable for them.

McMurphy doesn’t know, either, but he’s been talking with everybody in the world of college football and there’s hope.

“It’s very realistic to have a full 12-game schedule this year,” he said about college football, but he didn’t mention any specific timetable for that schedule to start. “(Commissioners and athletic directors) stress anything and everything is on the table.”

SEC presidents and chancellors are scheduled to vote May 22 on whether to allow their schools to open athletic facilities to athletes for voluntary workouts in June, according to a story at ESPN.com from college football writer Sam Khan, Jr.

In March, the league voted to suspend things through May and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey was confirming or denying anything Thursday.

Again, we don’t know what we don’t know.

Around the SEC the total number of positive tests for the combined states in the league is far below that of New York. Testing is a hot-button topic, although the leaders on the whole coronavirus mess testified before the U.S. Senate this week that it’s not really that accurate.

You could take the test that’s negative and be positive 10 minutes later when you go to the first door outside the doctor’s office. That comes from the top scientist in the country on the national task force.

What are the real numbers? We have no idea.

The numbers show a staggeringly low number of deaths among healthy young people. Even testing positive the odds are you won’t get sick, much less die.

There won’t be a vaccine by football season and that’s a little misleading. According to the top scientist in the country on the nation’s task force again, out of every 100 people that get the vaccine 40 are still going to get it. The numbers say 2 of those people will, unfortunately, pass away.

That’s if they duplicate the results of the most successful vaccine in history on viral infections (the flu). Treatments are improving daily, which is why the death rate percentage is dropping and likely why we’ll see college football start on time.

You can’t look at the daily numbers without looking at the overall context. We will likely never really know what the exact number actually is and there will likely be positive results for a while.

In the end, though, the guess is economic necessity will bring college sports back.

Which is what McMurphy sounds like he expects the powers that be to do.

“They want to try to start Sept. 5,” he said Thursday afternoon. “The one thing to count on is how critical the money is … they’ll figure out a way to play.”

Nobody has a clue what that’s going to look like, though.

And making a decision (or even predictions) now is a little silly.

“I don’t see the big rush out west to cancel stuff that far off,” McMurphy said. “We need to wait a little bit more. We’ve got until we have more information. It looks like the country progressing better. What will it look like in a month?”

Well, we don’t know because we don’t know what’s going to happen in the next month.