I think we are in alignment that the comment in question is inappropriate and a warning is in order.

My point is that perhaps we better define what this community considers inappropriate. For example, a few years ago opponent look-alike photo threads were common. Probably wouldn't be a good idea by today's standard.

The Terms of Service mostly focus on copyright, spam, and liability but do say the moderators can remove any material they find objectionable or harmful. "Objectionable or harmful" I think is reasonably well understood in polite society but is ultimately subjective. Perhaps insensitivity comes from a place of misunderstanding expectations and an articulated community standard could clear up what is acceptable in a more objective manner. The OT board doesn't need to be like an HR convention, but shouldn't be Reddit either. There are some interesting discussions here so I wouldn't want the moderator to just lock the thread.

I think debates are useful when you have candidates with critically nuanced proposals that undecided voters need clarity on. When you have polar opposites it becomes more a spectacle of both sides hoping the other guy makes a disastrous gaffe. I think we should have the debates on the America's Got Talent set and give the moderators a buzzer button every time a candidate won't answer a yes/no question or gives an answer totally unrelated to the question at hand. You are correct that Perot made things interesting and perhaps if ranked choice voting ever caught on, we might see more outside candidates reflective of people's realities become viable. Should Biden win the day, I think he will look a lot like Clinton and Obama in who he appoints to run things, for better or worse. Given the age and health of both candidates, VP picks may be more relevant than most years, and no guarantee Pence gets the nod since he has the charisma of a limp cucumber.

Won't the debates more or less LIKE dinner with the in-laws? Old men interrupting each other to argue about things they don't understand or remember, not really seeking to change anyone's mind but hoping to get an entertaining rise out of other people at the table.

Millennial here. Regrettably we got old and for most of us our partying days are sadly behind (and ahead) of us. While there will always be boys among men, most of us have some combination of careers, kids, spouses, mortgages, and elderly parents to deal with. In the last year I have spent more time on hold with insurance companies than at drinking establishments. For the record, we do not understand Gen Z or what the hell their parents did them either.

I love how without prompt, Florida State and the Seminole Tribe of Florida released statements saying they were both still good with the status quo there. Interesting how the mascot is not offensive when casino licenses are in play.

And there's no demand for hotels. Unless there is some fundamental change in the ecosystem, you could probably walk into any property on the day of and get a room.

Big 10 just announced they are playing a conference only schedule. Some anticipation that at least the other P5 follow suit, whether it ends up fall or spring. Curious what that means for the FCS-FBS matchups, do they get bought out or do they have some other out? Every school’s finances are in the toilet but could be a gut punch for FCS if the annual wealth transfer evaporated.

when I rented Putah Creek Lodge a few years ago they said it was indeed to cut down the funk and to be an educational hydrology demonstration. https://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/waterway

As to the size of Lake Spafford, it is fairly big but not deep. Many years ago I may have been party to a failed attempt to sail it on a sheet of plywood lashed to some inflatables. Key learnings were that OSB doesn’t have the buoyancy of regular wood and the lake is only waist deep.

The dedicated field hockey facility was built in 2014, apparently because the sport requires a “faster” turf than football or lacrosse. I know there has been work on sections of Putah Creek for about 5 years to install small weirs and pumps to make the water less foul along with rebuilding some paths and bridges for ADA and traffic reasons. While it might take me a while to paddle across Lake Spafford, I’d think rowers would want the mileage of the Sac or American rivers.

Field Hockey has never made sense from a travel perspective, even less so now. I'm sure the powers that be run analysis on costs and revenue per athlete seat for each sport and would look first to the sports with the worst margins. At least at the high school level, the field hockey clientele skews pretty wealthy so there could be donations happening in other parts of the university that make it worth while. In regard to Title IX, starting this fall NCAA is recognizing a form of cheerleading as an emerging sport. I would imagine schools will jump at the opportunity to claim their already-funded cheer squads as female athletes, which could buy latitude to ax a different money pit sport.

Mark Twain once said, "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics." Probably couldn't be a truer statement here because we have incomplete data that is being further manipulated or obscured by various layers of government to fit assorted narratives. We can argue the truthiness of any particular metric (though doesn't seem likely anyone is changing opinions here), but it doesn't change the fact that we have a dumpster fire convergence of health, economic, and cultural crises that are so intertwined you probably can't solve one without progress on all. In the context of this forum, those three factors are shaking the foundations of university academic and athletic business models nationwide more severely than any tax cut budget deficit has. Debate about rates of infection, death, or transmission may seem academic in a few months when we are keeping vigil over who is dropping football or not.

An acquaintance of mine is a professor at midwestern university. They are working up a proposal to hold classes "in person" where no attendance is taken and they are recorded "for review purposes." Don't know if it will float by DOE. What I'm hearing is that professors are worried about an exodus from their labs, the finance offices are worried about lost revenue because international students often pay sticker price, and administrators are concerned that this could hurt diversity metrics in a time of heightened awareness. Athletics is but just one piece.

I think they can stay IF they are taking in-person classes. Not sure if schools will find ways to bend the definition of “in person” to make it work. Kind of wonder why such a reliance on international basketball athletes. But in regard to some of your other posts, maybe this will help clean up some of the tennis situation.

I know this conversation is on COVID, but I'd like to point out that the BLM movement is not generally seeking anarchy the way that say the Sovereign Citizen movement is. Granted, there is no central leadership, so sure there are some extremists (see Seattle) and opportunists on the fringes. I'll admit at one point I was confused with Black Lives vs All Lives Matter and wished people would handle this in a legislative session instead of the streets. But I have tried to listen to my Black friends. Turns out, most of these protesters want the same things everyone does; a safe and prosperous neighborhood where the schools are legitimate and the trash gets picked up on Wednesdays, all functions of a well-oiled government that aren't currently happening on every block. People have tried the sanctioned routes of using the ballot box and peaceful protest (like kneeling) and feel the wheels of change have been too little, too slow, too late. They take to the streets, sometimes rioting or looting and all the sudden city leaders and corporations start listening and making changes. So why wouldn't people riot since it has proved to be more effective at moving the needle? To date, the health department in my area says they not seen a big correlation between protests and infections, maybe because they were outside. Here, the outbreaks among young people seem to be more strongly linked to privately hosted parties and the restaurant/bar industry.

Well, let us hope that this student athlete is lucky enough to be asymptomatic. I've had (young and healthy) friends develop really unpleasant symptoms that didn't necessarily put them in the hospital but certainly gave them a free month preview of hell.

I periodically (no pun intended) forget that print media still exists. I remember as a kid trekking down to the only liquor store in town that carried Street & Smith with my dad to get a copy, one of the few places D2 got covered. It was the kind of newsstand that was literally next to railroad tracks and had more dirty magazines than not.

Indeed an interesting paradox for some of the townies who want the students to drive the local economy but at the same time don't want the traffic, noise, etc. that their existence brings about. Will be interesting to see if the "open-ish" status of campus this fall keeps students living in town (presumably with some extra time for daytime consumption of Keystone Light) or if more people stay home and maybe commute to Davis once a week for necessary in-person labs. Jobs are a concern in all parts of the economy but perhaps acute among students-- if the ARC, Coffee House, etc. are closed or limited as likely necessary, that is a lot of student jobs evaporating which in turn might push enrollment down among those already on the financial precipice. Whenever we return to normal, it may well be a new normal. Continued quality distance learning options would be great for accessibility for people with careers, children, etc. who can't be in Davis at 11am three days a week. But I think there is still value in accessible residential college life-- I learned to live in 110 square feet with a jackass and how to tolerate an unshowered hippie slurping pungent pho soup in the back of Haring Hall -- so I hope that doesn't permanently go away or become only available to the wealthy because those are valuable experiences. I also suspect that the administration will try to use this opportunity to wipe away or remake things. I would not be surprised if Picnic Day, Whole Earth Festival, and the quirky factor of the Coffee House as we know them are permanently dead to reemerge in a couple years as highly branded and sanitized Learfield products under the thumb of a vice chancellor.

I don't want to speak for Thomson, because perhaps he is qualified and intends to complete a grad degree. But to illustrate your point 69, I had a football grad transfer in some masters classes when I was in school. The dude had crickets for brains and it was an open secret that the dean had directed the professors to give him B- grades. It was unfortunate that he took a seat from a bona fide applicant and it was insulting that the university thought my program was "easy enough" to hide a meat head in. And he did in fact disappear after the requisite bowl game.

You have a point that it is difficult to track the values of every company and if you get too choosy you won't be able to shop anywhere. Most publicly traded companies minimize direct political donations and funnel it through PACs that hedge their bets by donating to both sides of the aisle, although most tilt right because they want to keep their wage and benefit costs low. There are a few (tend to be privately held/family companies) like Hobby Lobby, Jimmy Johns, and Chick-fil-a that I choose not to patronize because of their owners' extreme stances. But in cases like Target vs Walmart, where they might be about the same on social responsibility, I tend to choose the former because their stores are cleaner with a better clientele. See peopleofwalmart.com for explanation. That said, my observation has been that mask usage in my town seems to vary to some degree by store, time of day, day of week, and likely other factors. I'm sure the big box retailers are using face masks as a data point in their research. They already use AI cameras to note what departments you go to first and how long you look at items before putting them in the cart.