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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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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