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WKU-Charlotte

BS! They are dodging everyone. Or, they know they are playing us on the 12th and want the extra prep. time. jmo
 
BS! They are dodging everyone. Or, they know they are playing us on the 12th and want the extra prep. time. jmo

🙄 Their game was going to be tomorrow. That would have given them almost two full weeks to have "extra prep time" for Marshall. Charlotte isn't cancelling a game they'd have a good chance of winning in order to get an extra five days of prep time for playing Marshall.

Did they also cancel their game with Gardner-Webb, an easy win for them, so they could get more time to prep for Marshall? So they will play Duke and App State but "dodge" teams like Gardner-Webb and WKU?

Can we finally stop with the claim that teams are trying to dodge Marshall and blame it on Covid or that they are cancelling games in order to have more time to prepare for Marshall? It makes the entire fanbase look like fools.
 
🙄 Their game was going to be tomorrow. That would have given them almost two full weeks to have "extra prep time" for Marshall. Charlotte isn't cancelling a game they'd have a good chance of winning in order to get an extra five days of prep time for playing Marshall.

Did they also cancel their game with Gardner-Webb, an easy win for them, so they could get more time to prep for Marshall? So they will play Duke and App State but "dodge" teams like Gardner-Webb and WKU?

Can we finally stop with the claim that teams are trying to dodge Marshall and blame it on Covid or that they are cancelling games in order to have more time to prepare for Marshall? It makes the entire fanbase look like fools.
The extra prep comment was basically a joke. I thought GW was the one that cancelled the game with Charlotte? Even the sports talk shows have started to question programs like FSU and their use/abuse of the COVID excuse. I guess my frustration should be directed more to the league and the actions/inaction in reagrds to shuffling games around as the SEC/ACC/B12 have done. Up until lately they haven't done anything.
 
I don't think Charlotte is ducking us, because they have a chance to play in the league championship game if they beat us. I'll even give Rice a pass because let's face it - these kids are going to Rice, they're more interested in education anyway.

FIU though? They played an FCS team on a Saturday, got embarassed, and then two days later couldn't come up with 22 healthy players to play an American Football game. And their coach is Butch Davis.

I'm not surprised Marshall fans are angry - the idea that we may have ostensibly lost to FAU in Huntington 9-20 because FIU and Charlotte can't (or won't) field a team to play us is maddening.
 
By Saturday, CUSA leadership needs to grow a pair. Evaluate the COVID status, medical reports and outlook vis-à-vis FIU and UNCC. Whomever is better off in that regard gets the HERD on Friday the 11th. If it is UNCC then they come to Huntington for an East Division show down. If FIU is in better shape, and Miami is not in some super scarlet color on the Gov. Jim Justice Color Scale, then the HERD travels to Miami for the game.! Make a damn decision, CUSA "leaders", and stick to it!
 
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If our conference leadership had any balls they would make Charlotte forfeit each game and declare the opposition the winner.

So you want C-USA to do what no other conference is doing? You want them to penalize schools that are looking out for the well-being and safety of student-athletes from both teams? Brilliant. Perhaps, they should just start paying coaches, administrators, and team doctors bonus money if they don't cancel games due to Covid. I can't imagine anything going wrong with that.
 
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Maybe the conference should have just cancelled the conference championship at the beginning of the season and said "This is all just for giggles and chucks."

Before we get too high and mighty on the "asking student athletes to put their lives at risk" horse, we should probably realize that if that were really ever the priority, we wouldn't have played a single game and these kids would have been allowed to spend the last 8 months focusing solely on academics from their remote-learning hovels.

We've got a system in place where players can test positive for COVID, but that information is never disclosed to the league or to that team's opponent. I'm not arguing the legality of HIPAA here, I'm just saying: if tracking exposures and infections was never going to be a public thing, we were accepting the almost total certainty that infected players would be allowed to play, and that other players would become infected by them during games.

Let's say FIU didn't duck our game - that means that so many infected players took the field for FIU that Saturday that they didn't have 22 of them left over to play us the next week. Forget Marshall, FIU should be apologizing to Jacksonville State, no?
 
FAU seemed to make it work, they traveled and played us with about 12 players left home - 6 starters to boot. kudos to them.
 
Before we get too high and mighty on the "asking student athletes to put their lives at risk" horse, we should probably realize that if that were really ever the priority, we wouldn't have played a single game and these kids would have been allowed to spend the last 8 months focusing solely on academics from their remote-learning hovels.

By that argument, you can say that no institution ever cares about the lives of student-athletes, because putting them in planes and on buses to travel puts their lives at risk.

There are ways to greatly mitigate the virus, especially for those in an age group that isn't seriously impacted by it, and C-USA has done that.

We've got a system in place where players can test positive for COVID, but that information is never disclosed to the league or to that team's opponent . . . we were accepting the almost total certainty that infected players would be allowed to play, and that other players would become infected by them during games.

Source for those claims?

Let's say FIU didn't duck our game - that means that so many infected players took the field for FIU that Saturday that they didn't have 22 of them left over to play us the next week. Forget Marshall, FIU should be apologizing to Jacksonville State, no?

You've made that claim twice, and it doesn't hold up to basic logic. When a team cancels due to Covid, it isn't because they are under 22 healthy players. No FBS team is going to play a game with just 22 (or even 32) healthy players. It's absurd to continue throwing that claim into this discussion.

And it isn't just "infected" players. Schools are also using contact tracing even if a player hasn't tested positive. So FIU could have had 80 players healthy to play Jacksonville State, then had 20 players test positive. But if each of those 20 are roommates with a total of 30 other roommates, there's a good chance that at least 50 would be held out, putting their number of players at 30, which no FBS team would take the field with.
 
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Source for those claims?

That's the thing - neither one of us has a source other than our own cynicism or lack thereof. There's not some detailed public record on all of this, there's just the information that is coming out of college football programs, and folks are making decisions on their own as to whether or not to believe that.

Have we really gone three months without a single COVID diagnosis in the Marshall football program? Of course not, but I think once they realized that they didn't even have to report the topline statistics, they weren't going to do so voluntarily, and as a result we haven't had any public reports since August. That's what my favorite team is doing.

FIU got beat by an FCS team in their own facility, and reading the post-game wrap-up on that, I read about a few players from various levels of their roster being out with COVID, but the larger issue being their lack of a D-I quarterback. They cancelled our game two days later under the premise they didn't have enough players available to play.

I poke fun at that, I mention "22 able bodies" because teams are allowed to draw the line between playing and not playing wherever they want. A team could be down 20 players, but have all their starters and play. A team could be out their starting QB and not have a capable backup, and the coach has the complete freedom to say, "Nah, not this week."

I don't take Butch Davis at his word. You can if you want to, but its not like it really matters what either one of us think.
 
That's the thing - neither one of us has a source other than our own cynicism or lack thereof.

Huh? What have I said that needs a source? I haven't made some outlandish claim like you and another have.

My claim was that Charlotte wasn't ducking what could be a win for them just to get a few extra days to prepare for Marshall. That makes no sense. You want a source for common sense?

On the other hand, your claim is that 1) Teams are purposely playing kids who had just tested positive for Covid 2) There is no mandatory reporting of positive tests to the conference 3) Teams are accepting that they will play Covid-positive players. Those are some strong accusations to make without any source.

I poke fun at that, I mention "22 able bodies" because teams are allowed to draw the line between playing and not playing wherever they want. A team could be down 20 players, but have all their starters and play. A team could be out their starting QB and not have a capable backup, and the coach has the complete freedom to say, "Nah, not this week."

Yeah, that's not how this works.

Conference USA has guidelines and a threshold for the game to be played. FIU claimed that due to not just Covid, but also contact tracing and injuries, they didn't have that threshold for scholarship athletes.

FIU didn't just say "Oh, we have too many kids with Covid, so we aren't playing." They admitted that it was a mix of Covid, contact tracing, and injuries that lowered their scholarship players under the threshold.
 
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Huh? What have I said that needs a source? I haven't made some outlandish claim like you and another has.

My claim was that Charlotte wasn't ducking what could be a win for them just to get a few extra days to prepare for Marshall. That makes no sense. You want a source for common sense?

On the other hand, your claim is that 1) Teams are purposely playing kids who had just tested positive for Covid 2) There is no mandatory reporting of positive tests to the conference 3) Teams are accepting that they will play Covid-positive players. Those are some strong accusations to make without any source.



Yeah, that's not how this works.

Conference USA has guidelines and a threshold for the game to be played. FIU claimed that due to not just Covid, but also contact tracing and injuries, they didn't have that threshold for scholarship athletes.

FIU didn't just say "Oh, we have too many kids with Covid, so we aren't playing." They admitted that it was a mix of Covid, contact tracing, and injuries that lowered their scholarship players under the threshold.

What is the number of scholarship athletes required in conference USA?
 
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Question. If a team suffers sufficient injuries and cannot field enough players to play a game, is that a forfeit, or is it like a covid excuse?
 
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no offense here, but it's always an uphill battle when someone with vast, superior intelligence decides to pick you out, and shun you with their knowledge of any and everything on a free message board forum.
The thing with Rifle is that sometimes he needs to chew, and its best to just avoid being the one that gets stuck in his teeth.
 
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Nevermind, HerdFan73 beat me to it.

Nevermind, HerdFan73 beat me to it.

Yup. I’ve seen thresholds for other conferences published by position and overall. I’ve never seen such a thing for Conference USA. It seems very arbitrary how teams can decide themselves if they have enough players to play. Seems very open to the possibility of beneficial interpretation on the part of the team that lacks depth and is about to receive an ass whipping on their home field.

Then apparently they can throw in injuries? That’s first I’ve ever heard of that. So if we get 22 sprained ankles against Rice, can we say we don’t have enough scholarship athletes to play against FIU and get a pass on having to risk that trip to Miami for no reason the week before our championship game?

And if there ARE non-arbitrary thresholds established like the real conferences have , I would just love to see them. Because I haven’t.
 
So if we get 22 sprained ankles against Rice, can we say we don’t have enough scholarship athletes to play against FIU and get a pass on having to risk that trip to Miami for no reason the week before our championship game?
There's a lot of risk for MU in playing FIU next week - if we're to take them at their word, they've been riddled with COVID all season, and it would be a nightmare scenario for us to play a throwaway game against them, and then our whole O-line is out for the championship game because their dirty-ass DL gave our guys the plague.
 
I truly dont think Charlotte is ducking us as I want us to kick their smug ass and their cartoon character coach. CUSA does seem to tip toe around with conference scheduling presumably due to litigation avoidance prompted by the use of the Covid card. I do not care for UK but Stoops still took his team to Tuscaloosa and Gainesville with 16 players out stating he was not ducking anyone. They got the hell beat out of them......so much for being a martyr. We just need to beat who we play when we play
 
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