Reporter Claims Decision To Play Football Marks Big Ten's 'Darkest Day'- Did She Forget These Sex Crime Scandals?
The Big Ten, one of college football’s premier sports conferences, will play a modified fall season beginning next month, the conference announced Wednesday.
College football just got better ? pic.twitter.com/G001V4Ocz3
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) September 16, 2020
But if you thought that news would be warmly received by everyone, you’d be wrong.
There are many people who have a stake in making the lives of Americans miserable.
Downtrodden people in election years tend to seek change, so you’d have to assume to some degree that COVID lockdowns, tacit support for rioting from elites and the shuttering of amateur sports leagues and schools are related to the election.
Democrats in the media, in government and in academia want President Donald Trump to lose in November.
They want it very badly, and so they wanted to temporarily cancel college football in the rust belt and treat student-athletes like sacrificial lambs.
They had the Big Ten and its fans up against the wall — until they didn’t.
Big Ten players can now determine whether or not they will play this season.
Big Ten football is back:
#WeAre BACK! ?? pic.twitter.com/DXtjWICDR6
— Penn State Football (@PennStateFball) September 16, 2020
Let’s play. pic.twitter.com/0ANy6G1qo1
— Michigan Football (@UMichFootball) September 16, 2020
We’re back.#GoBuckeyes pic.twitter.com/25Zyd0NP4M
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) September 16, 2020
— Michigan State Football (@MSU_Football) September 16, 2020
With the prevalence of social media, and shows on television such as ESPN’s “First Take,” and Fox Sports’ “Undisputed,” there are a lot of bad sports takes out there.
But USA Today columnist Christine Brennan on Wednesday delivered one of the worst overall takes in college football history when she came out strongly against a fall season for Big Ten football.
Brennan actually wrote that the Big Ten’s decision to play football signaled “the darkest day” the conference had ever seen.
“For decades, the Big Ten has thought of itself as a different kind of sports conference, one that proudly touts the academic achievements and Great Lakes values of its like-minded, highly-regarded, internationally-ranked research institutions,” Brennan wrote. “The Big Ten wasn’t the SEC; it wasn’t the Big 12. It was better than that, and it was happy to tell you all about it.”
Brennan wrote that the Big Ten has traditionally prioritized “science, medicine and safety.”
She argued, “Let the football factories of the SEC, Big 12 and ACC (Clemson’s playground) continue playing.”
Brennan then boldly declared Wednesday to be “the darkest day in Big Ten sports history.”
She threw a fit over news that football teams up north will play football, writing that her superior and “vaunted conference caved. It choked. It got scared. It became the SEC.”
Aside from Brennan’s piece reeking of elitism, the Op-Ed also insulted child victims of sexual abuse, which she had apparently forgotten about.
The conference Brennan calls home has been plagued by numerous sex scandals with countless victims.
Jerry Sandusky coached for Pennsylvania State University for years, and will likely spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars. He sexually abused children over a period of decades, until his acts were uncovered and he was locked away in 2011, CNN reported.
There have probably been many dark days for Sandusky’s victims.
Likewise, former USA Gymnastics national team doctor Larry Nassar will also likely spend the rest of his natural life behind bars for sexually abusing 150 girls and women, The New York Times reported.
On a dark day for the conference, on Jan. 24, 2018, Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for his actions.
Nassar was also a former osteopathic physician and professor at Michigan State University, which is a school in the Big Ten.
There is also the case of Dr. Robert Anderson, who worked as a University of Michigan physician, and was employed by the school from 1968 to 2003, CNN reported.
Anderson died in 2008, but after his death, hundreds of mostly male students came forward to claim he sexually abused them, and had a habit of allegedly finding reasons to examine the genitals of athletes.
Anderson isn’t around to defend himself, but if the claims are true, there were many dark days on the Michigan campus in Ann Arbor.
But let’s not forget about the case of Ohio State team doctor Richard Strauss, who also allegedly sexually abused the school’s student-athletes for two decades before his death in 2005.
Sports Illustrated laid out the case against Strauss in a wide-ranging story.
Dark days for victims of sexual abuse are plentiful, and many of them occurred on the campuses of the Big Ten’s flagship schools.
But the conference giving its players a choice about the future of their careers is the low moment for the Big Ten’s sports, at least in the eyes of those with political motives.
Big Ten athletic programs have sadly been targeted by sexual predators, or alleged sexual predators, for decades.
We will probably never know the full scope of the suffering.
We know that the suffering of sex abuse victims is apparently not very important to people such as Brennan.
Their dark days never occurred to her until her column was called out online, and she attempted to spin her story and claim the dark days comment was a reference only to sports:
Four of the worst sex abuse scandals in US history: Jerry Sandusky at PSU; Larry Nassar at MSU; Richard Strauss at OSU; Robert Anderson at Michigan. All that evil, all on Big Ten campuses. Chilling. Today is about an awful conference-wide sports decision. https://t.co/uaWfgpgSqO
— Christine Brennan (@cbrennansports) September 16, 2020
But her post actually replaced an earlier one, which was deleted, and contained the same context as her published hyperbole.
Screenshots live forever pic.twitter.com/YYbDXkEaDc
— Brendan Schick (@HolySchick5) September 16, 2020
She was outed as soulless and driven by hateful politics.
Brennan would gleefully cancel sports and downplay the pain of abuse victims, presumably, if it would help Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden get a leg up with rust belt voters.
She actually admitted as much when she attacked President Trump in her column:
“[W]e could call it the Trumpeting of the Big Ten. It was just two weeks ago that Trump, desperate to win votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, told the conference to play football.
“Originally, the league stood its ground. Rutgers president Jonathan Holloway aptly called it ‘cheap politics.’ But wouldn’t you know, the university presidents ended up following right along, giving Trump exactly what he wanted.
“I never would have expected the Big Ten presidents to be so shaky, so fearful, so afraid of their own shadow.”
Brennan went on to brag about her multiple degrees from multiple Big Ten institutions.
But no amount of eduction can apparently teach a person the importance of compassion.
Brennan had hoped to hype up the dangers posed by the coronavirus in her column so she could scare people and score a few cheap political points against the president.
In the process, she diminished the pain of so many people.
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