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All four quarterbacks for the Denver Broncos are not eligible to play football today because of concerns about catching the coronavirus.
This situation marks the first time ever a professional football team hasn’t had a quarterback on its roster available to play the night before a game.
Odd.
Then there’s this:
A woman named Sarah Fuller kicked off for Vanderbilt’s football team today – the first time in NCAA history a woman has played football for a Big 5 Conference team. She plays on the women’s soccer team for Vanderbilt.
Unprecedented, unusual and head-turning.
Now consider this:
Jarret Patterson, a running back for the University of Buffalo, ran for eight touchdowns against Kent State – tying the all-time record for touchdowns in a college football game.
Eight touchdowns.
Eight.
That’s sort of like an NBA player scoring 60 or 70 points in a game, or a baseball player swatting six or seven home runs in a game, or a hockey player scoring 10 or 11 goals in a game or NASCAR driver winning a race by two hours.
And Michigan fell to a record of 2 wins and 4 losses – totally unusual.
Today’s four sports stories are four of four hundred reasons why the year 2020 is the most bizarre we have ever lived through. Some years are memorable, some sadder than others, some surprising, some seeming to be non-stop jarring and too much in every way: events, problems, stress, change, etc.
2020 has been all of that multiplied by 100. A mashup of too much of everything, this year is a trash can overflowing with junk, littering the road, messing up real estate values, creating eyesores, aggravating everybody.
Remember how this all began in March with the entire sports world shutting down from coast to coast and for months. Then the NBA bubble playoffs twisted our sensibilities. Then baseball and football games got cancelled and postponed left and right.
What’s next?
What a year. Not one to be remembered fondly, it’s been a year to be forgotten quickly. For sanity’s sake. Let’s never talk about 2020 once it’s over.
Until then, let’s think about today, just today.
There will never be four more weird football stories breaking on the same day: no quarterbacks available, a woman college football player which is fine and inspiring yet unusual, 8 touchdowns by one guy, and Michigan with a bad record.
From the Broncos perspective, they have one option. Pull down owner John Elway from the owner’s booth and make him their QB.
“I could do it and would be better than our current quarterbacks, but I’d rather sit in the owner’s booth and eat free hamburgers and nachos with cheese dip,” said Elway. “Plus I’m older and can’t risk catching the virus. I’m in the high-risk demographic so I’ll pass.”
High-risk demographics. Social distancing. Mask wearing.
Dancing the 2020 two-step by ourselves, alone, with no one near us. Day after day after day after day.
From the Vanderbilt perspective, does this open the floodgates to more woman wanting to play for the Vanderbilt football team? If so, that means they would have to build a new locker room for the women because it wouldn’t be cool to have all the players change into and out of their uniforms in the same locker room.
And what positions besides kicker would these women be most likely to land starting positions? Free safety? Linebacker? Running back?
Who knows? It’s 2020. There are no answers. Unknowns are rampant. Confusion reigns. Football got freaky.
And then there’s the guy who scored 8 touchdowns. This isn’t a story about him so much as the defense that didn’t figure out how to stop this guy even after, say, his third touchdown. They knew after his third he was getting the ball until the defense proved it could stop him, and they still let him score five more touchdowns.
They should have focused more on him. They should send 11 defensive guys at that running back after his third touchdown and given up hundreds of touchdowns by other guys so long as that guy didn’t get anymore.
Better to let several guys beat you than one over and over eight times. It was Crazy Eights Football and Kent State got put in an insane asylum.
Then we end with his unusual football news that happened today. Michigan lost and fell to a record of 2 wins and 4 losses. I can’t remember a time in the last 50 years when Michigan had such a poor record after six games.
So odd and strange, so 2020.
Wolverine coach Jim Harbaugh agrees. This is a year he’d rather forgot. He’s not alone.
So forgettable. So much a period in our lives we just want to get beyond, to stop having to endure.
Freakiness aplenty has dominated this year of 2020.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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