August 10, 2020

When Football Is a Money Loser, Suddenly the Players Come First

Exciting MAC action in the Before Times.Kyle Okita/CSM via ZUMA

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A major college conference has canceled its fall sports:

The Mid-American Conference postponed its football season, the conference announced Saturday, becoming the first Football Bowl Subdivision league to decide not to hold games this fall because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

….“The decision is grounded in the core values of the Conference that prioritize student-athlete well-being, an area the MAC has traditionally taken a leadership role,” Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said in a statement.

That’s a breath of fresh air, isn’t it? It’s good to see a college sports conference putting its athletes first even if it means losing—

Many MAC schools rely on the revenue generated through guarantee games — when a Power Five school pays another program to play it during the nonconference schedule. Most of these games have been canceled because all of the Power Five leagues have chosen to play one or zero nonconference games this season.

Ah, I see. Without any of these guarantee games, football suddenly becomes a money loser for MAC schools. And just as suddenly, the well-being of the players becomes paramount and the season is canceled. Got it.

UPDATE: The Big Ten has canceled its football season too. I’m sure all the other dominoes will now fall as well.

With no fans in the stands, I imagine that football is a money loser even for Power Five schools. That probably made it a lot easier to do the right thing.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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