This past summer I excoriated NC State baseball coach Elliott Avent for not insisting that his players get vaccinated. As a result of his lack of leadership, a number of Wolfpack players contracted COVID, and the team was disqualified from post-season competition just one game shy of the World Series finals. Asked why he had not mandated vaccinations, Avent said, “My job is to teach them baseball, but I don’t try to indoctrinate my kids with my values or my opinions…These are young men that can make their own decisions, and that’s what they did.”
Avent’s head-in-the-sand attitude and the selfishness of several players cost NCSU a national championship. It also helped to further facilitate the spread of a deadly disease. State’s self-made disaster should have been a warning to all college athletes and coaches, yet exactly six months later, NC State was at the center of another major COVID controversy. This time, the Wolfpack football squad was denied a major bowl victory when a number of unvaccinated UCLA players tested positive, and the Bruins pulled out of the big game. As Yogi Berra said, it was déjà vu all over again, except that this was more egregious than the World Series fiasco.
The Wolfpack had arrived in San Diego five days ahead of the Holiday Bowl and, according to State coach Dave Doeren, his team was fully vaccinated and fully prepared. Not so UCLA, who pulled out of the bowl game four hours before kick-off, with Bruin coach Chip Kelly saying a number of his unvaccinated players had tested positive, and that his defensive unit was “decimated.” But Doeren and others have since suggested that Kelly knew days earlier of his team’s dilemma, and should have said something to Holiday Bowl officials and to State’s athletic director. If that’s true, and if Kelly had been more transparent, then there would have been time for the Holiday Bowl committee to secure another opponent for NC State. Woulda, shoulda, coulda. It’s all moot now. Sort of.
One important point lingers from this mess. Why in the hell didn’t UCLA mandate vaccinations for its players? By now, all of the Bruin squad should have been fully vaccinated, including having received a booster to help protect against the effects of two different COVID variants. Failure to do so falls on the chancellor, athletic director, and coach, all of whom should be fired. Short of that, the NCAA should put UCLA football on probation, and ban them from bowl competition for three years. The one consolation for State is that the NCAA eventually declared the game a forfeit, and awarded a victory and the trophy to the Wolfpack.
I don’t usually write about sports, but this incident has broader implications regarding the health and safety of all Americans.
The unvaccinated UCLA players are arrogant and reckless, and most likely also buy into some of the popular conspiracy theories, for example, that the government has embedded microchips into the vaccines so it can track our every movement. But I don’t need a microchip to tell me where the Bruins and other selfish anti-vaxxers are located. They’re all living in fantasy land, in the state of denial, and along Q Street, just to the right of all reason.
January 4, 2022 @ 6:01 am
NCSU Screwed By Anti-Vax UCLA
This past summer I excoriated NC State baseball coach Elliott Avent for not insisting that his players get vaccinated. As a result of his lack of leadership, a number of Wolfpack players contracted COVID, and the team was disqualified from post-season competition just one game shy of the World Series finals. Asked why he had not mandated vaccinations, Avent said, “My job is to teach them baseball, but I don’t try to indoctrinate my kids with my values or my opinions…These are young men that can make their own decisions, and that’s what they did.”
Avent’s head-in-the-sand attitude and the selfishness of several players cost NCSU a national championship. It also helped to further facilitate the spread of a deadly disease. State’s self-made disaster should have been a warning to all college athletes and coaches, yet exactly six months later, NC State was at the center of another major COVID controversy. This time, the Wolfpack football squad was denied a major bowl victory when a number of unvaccinated UCLA players tested positive, and the Bruins pulled out of the big game. As Yogi Berra said, it was déjà vu all over again, except that this was more egregious than the World Series fiasco.
The Wolfpack had arrived in San Diego five days ahead of the Holiday Bowl and, according to State coach Dave Doeren, his team was fully vaccinated and fully prepared. Not so UCLA, who pulled out of the bowl game four hours before kick-off, with Bruin coach Chip Kelly saying a number of his unvaccinated players had tested positive, and that his defensive unit was “decimated.” But Doeren and others have since suggested that Kelly knew days earlier of his team’s dilemma, and should have said something to Holiday Bowl officials and to State’s athletic director. If that’s true, and if Kelly had been more transparent, then there would have been time for the Holiday Bowl committee to secure another opponent for NC State. Woulda, shoulda, coulda. It’s all moot now. Sort of.
One important point lingers from this mess. Why in the hell didn’t UCLA mandate vaccinations for its players? By now, all of the Bruin squad should have been fully vaccinated, including having received a booster to help protect against the effects of two different COVID variants. Failure to do so falls on the chancellor, athletic director, and coach, all of whom should be fired. Short of that, the NCAA should put UCLA football on probation, and ban them from bowl competition for three years. The one consolation for State is that the NCAA eventually declared the game a forfeit, and awarded a victory and the trophy to the Wolfpack.
I don’t usually write about sports, but this incident has broader implications regarding the health and safety of all Americans.
The unvaccinated UCLA players are arrogant and reckless, and most likely also buy into some of the popular conspiracy theories, for example, that the government has embedded microchips into the vaccines so it can track our every movement. But I don’t need a microchip to tell me where the Bruins and other selfish anti-vaxxers are located. They’re all living in fantasy land, in the state of denial, and along Q Street, just to the right of all reason.