Lou Holtz has compared playing college football through coronavirus to the invasion of Normandy:
“The way it is right now, they just don’t want to have sports and there’s no way in this world that you can do anything in this world without a risk. People stormed Normandy … they knew there were going to be casualties, they knew there were going to be risks, but it was a way of life.”
He’s also praised Donald Trump as “an outstanding leader” who “genuinely cares about people.”
In fact, college football during a raging pandemic is nothing like storming into Europe to battle Nazis, and Trump is neither an outstanding leader nor someone who cares about people. If any of those things were true, there would be some measurable positive impact of this football season, and Trump would have done something, anything, to mitigate the spread of a virus that is wildly out of control and threatening to reach even more disastrous levels as people travel and hold Thanksgiving gatherings next week.
And now Holtz is living proof, as the former coach of Indiana Superspreader University has tested positive for COVID-19. Thankfully, the 83-year-old Holtz is on his way to recovery, although he told the Columbia, S.C., ABC affiliate, “I don’t have a lot of energy right now.”
It’s hard to feel a lot of sympathy for someone who willfully ignored the dangers of the virus and advocated for others to risk their health for the sake of entertainment, especially when Holtz so disingenuously said, “The underprivileged, the people from the poor neighborhoods, where are they going to get an education? What has happened to our way of life?”
It is, in fact, possible to give people an education without football. Remote learning is a real thing. Remote football is not. One is important. One is not. Holtz managed to get those things wrong while also downplaying what was really at stake on D-Day, giving full-throated support to Trump and viciously trashing Joe Biden’s religiosity along the way. He also managed to sneak in a maskless visit with fellow Branch Covidian, Trump, on Halloween, less than three weeks after the President tested positive.
But neither Holtz nor anyone else should have to suffer with this virus. Here’s hoping that he has a speedy recovery, and also the chance to gain a new perspective, because the uncontrolled spread of this virus in America can be directly traced to so many of the things that Holtz has given his endorsement.
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