SMQ: The debate between safety and spectacle in college football

The 2022 college football season kicked off on the last Saturday of August with 11 games across the country. Did every game need to be played, though?

Week 0 has come and gone, with just under a dozen college football games whetting the appetite of fans across the country. Even as most of the games ended in blowouts, the final numbers on the scoreboard were less important than the ability to watch action on the gridiron once again. On balance, it was a welcome return for those who love the sport.

There was the conference thriller on foreign soil, as Nebraska took an 11-point lead in the third quarter and turned it into a three-point loss against Northwestern. It proved the only game to finish inside single digits in the final margin.

A blowout isn’t inherently a bad thing in college football. Especially with four of the games pitting FCS teams against FBS opponents, and two others matching up Group of Five squads against Power Five favorites, there was bound to be some lopsided finishes on this first Saturday of the season.

What, though, is the utility of a blowout against an opponent that can barely field the minimum number of players at a given position?

Entering a college football season, it is a fair assumption that a team will have its full roster of players healthy and available to take the field. That, however, wasn’t the case for a historically black university that played on Saturday. Due to a combination of injuries, academic issues, and transfer eligibility questions, Florida A&M was left to travel with only seven healthy and eligible offensive linemen for their showdown against a Power Five program.

Forget for a moment that Florida A&M found itself tied late in the first quarter against North Carolina. Set aside the fact that the Rattlers acquitted themselves well with a roster of scholarship players that was smaller than an NFL squad on game day.

On a day when North Carolina claimed to be culminating a weeklong celebration of HBCUs on its campus with this showdown against Florida A&M, the Tar Heels completely discounted the desires of their opponent to stay safe and compete under equal conditions. If North Carolina truly had respect for HBCUs, they might have listened to the concerns of HBCU students when they were voiced.

Rattlers head coach Willie Simmons laid out the rationale for why Florida A&M’s remaining players initially opted out of their trip to Chapel Hill. “The players didn’t feel comfortable playing under those conditions and they are all understandably frustrated with many of our internal processes in the certification process, so they decided not to play,” Simmons said in a written statement. “After a few more discussions with university leadership, including the president of the university, the players ultimately decided to play the game.”

At face value, it appears that the players were allowed to make a free decision about whether to play North Carolina on Saturday. Yet the $450,000 guarantee for the trip to Chapel Hill would have turned into a $450,000 payout by Florida A&M had the school canceled their appearance. The hit to the budget of nearly one million dollars forced the university president and key athletic department figures to coerce compliance from players who were justifiably concerned about their collective safety with so few players eligible to play.

This wasn’t a matter of competing merely for the sake of competition. This was purely motivated by the paycheck.

Was this college football game worth the risk?

For Florida A&M, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars was far preferable to losing an equivalent amount of money. The Rattlers showed resolve in taking on North Carolina and punching above their weight for most of the game. But the final score showed a four-touchdown deficit as the Tar Heels more than doubled up the score on their overmatched opponent.

Jeremy Moussa had a respectable game at quarterback for the Rattlers, throwing for 279 yards and a pair of touchdowns on 28-of-38 passing. But Moussa was sacked three times, pressured several others, and threw an interception late in the first half that led to seven UNC points.

With so many offensive linemen out of the rotation, the running game had far more trouble moving the ball for A&M. As a unit, the rushing corps finished with only 56 net rushing yards on 27 carries. Terrell Jennings led the team with 39 yards on 10 carries, but he also coughed up a costly fumble as he struggled to move beyond the line of scrimmage. Other than his one 21-yard burst, Jennings fared as well as the rest of the team as he averaged only two yards per carry.

The final score read 52-24 at Kenan Memorial Stadium on Saturday evening. On one hand, it is a testament to the resilience of the Rattlers in a truly trying situation. On the other hand, it is evidence that we learned nothing from the novel coronavirus pandemic over the past few seasons.

As much as I love college football for the spectacle, there was no legitimate reason why this game couldn’t be postponed until next week, until later in the season, or until a future season. We’ve seen plenty of games reworked on the fly since 2020 — but instead of taking the lesson and remaining flexible, North Carolina chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz and his counterparts at Florida A&M decided it was easier to just ignore the labor that creates the spectacle.

As much as this was a learning opportunity for the Rattlers who did travel north to Chapel Hill, it was a lost opportunity for university administrators to show real leadership and put the health and safety concerns of the athletes over the fiscal concerns of the department coffers.

Ultimately, we’ve learned nothing since 2020. The spectacle always comes before safety when it comes to college football, and the concerns of the athletes will always be sacrificed for the concerns of the athletic director. Priority dictates that the show must go on, no matter the wishes of the underpaid laborers who create the spectacle.