Chron Opinion: Cancel UH Football This Fall

Opinion: Cancel University of Houston football this fall to keep players safe from pandemic

by Billy Hawkins and Robert Zaretsky

‘Fall term now also rhymes with fatal germs. Two weeks ago, the news site Axios described Houston as “the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Texas.” A couple of days ago, Houston could better be described as the epidemic’s molten core. As our city lurched toward the holiday weekend, the Houston Fire Department was “overwhelmed” by COVID-19-related calls and the base ICU capacity of our hospitals topped 102 percent.’

Hawkins is a professor at the University of Houston in the department of Health and Human Performance. Zaretsky teaches history at the Honors College, University of Houston.

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So, does that mean that the Astros, Texans, and Rockets should cancel their planned seasons also? How about the rest of the AAC, or for that matter all of NCAA college football and sports?

Have one considered different scenarios for consideration?

Have one considered the economic impacts?

How about that today is July 6th and it isn’t September 6th?

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If UT and A&M cancel then we will so therefore we aren’t canceling

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All it takes is one domino

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One of these days Dr Zaretsky will find the magic combination required to eliminate all sports. Can’t someone pick him first at the Honors Retreat softball game and save the rest of us the pontificating?

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Professors are right up there with journalists and politicians as the most respected professions ever known to mankind.

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we should just cancel life and all sit in our closests at home and twiddle our thumbs!!! LOL

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Any Zaretsky opinion on sports is one worth ignoring.

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This opinion piece in the only newspaper in a city as large as Houston most is likely Robert Zaretsky’s most-read work. He never misses an opportunity to suggest that athletic funds would be better spent on academia, completely ignoring that the donor base for athletics exists to create a comprehensive collegiate culture on campus to attract the best scholars possible. He wrote similar articles about his lack of understanding about soccer while living in France.
We get it, Bob, you hate sports.

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This is just another chronicle in the obsession some people have with safety. Safety is a virtue, but is by no means the only virtue. If it were, nothing would get done.

It used to be law professors like Robert Palmer and Stephen Huber that were the most gung-ho anti-athletics.

Hell, back in the early 90s, Huber led a faculty senate vote to drop UH athletics to Division III.

Now, it appears that this guy has taken up the anti-athletics faculty mantle.

SKIROO him!!!

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Love it. Wish I’s said that!! Go Coogs, ignore your professors!! (Well, except for when you have their class, then jump through their hoops and forget that junk asap.)

In the real world, most of us are made to figure complex issues out and make them work and still deliver otherwise we starve versus pontificating from the ivory BS tower and still getting to take a state paycheck while delivering little value.

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Somewhere in my life I learned that PhD really stands for Piled High and Deep. Believe it!

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Agreed…I have a retired buddy who was super high up in Shell (not just America). He always says that people with Doctorates (Ph.D, MD, JD), all think that once they get their degree in one little corner of knowledge, that they all think they know EVERYTHING…
True…
So Thanks Professor !!!
As if anyone gave a rat’s ass what you think about this.

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Are teachers as respected as professors?

A&M has a ton of students from the greater Houston area and has more at games from Houston area than we do.

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Cancel the Chronicle instead of football. As another poster said, the Texans, Aggies, Horns etc. are not cancelled so why should we? These two writers are full of nonsense. That’s as nice as I can be.

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Robert Zaretsky was exceedingly skilled at putting me to sleep in Human Sit class.

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Yeah…that dude has been around forever and yes he sucked in Human Sit…

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Remember when everyone was all up in arms that they canceled the Rodeo?

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