Big Ten scraps fall football season due to coronavirus
11 August 2020
The Big Ten announced Tuesday that it has voted to postpone its 2020 fall sports season, including football, due to risks posed by the coronavirus pandemic, hoping instead to play in the spring.
Why it matters: The move from one of the most prominent conferences in college sports will almost certainly prompt other Power Five leagues to follow suit.
- The decision comes after the Mid-American Conference became the first FBS league to postpone fall sports last Saturday.
- The Big Ten previously announced it would play a conference-only schedule, but the state of the outbreak in the U.S. — which is still reporting over 1,000 deaths a day and over five million total cases — has made the situation untenable.
The big picture: The pressure to suspend college football has been fueled by concerns about myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle. The condition, which has been linked to COVID-19, has been found in at least five Big Ten Conference athletes, along with several athletes in other conferences, ESPN reports.
The other side: Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh issued a letter on Monday arguing in favor of playing, saying he believed "that this virus can be controlled and handled because of the facts," per MLive. He cited his team's success in testing athletes and coaches and noted it had "zero pauses in our training" as a result of the pandemic.
- A dozen players from all five major conferences released a joint statement on Sunday expressing their desire to play the 2020 season, while laying out their plans to form a players' association in the future.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.