Paying homage to the legendary Tony Bennett like only an unrelenting bureaucracy knows how, the city of Berkley and the Pac-12 conference duet forced the hand of the University of California football in “leaving their starting quarterback in San Francisco” for a road trip to Tucson, where the team performed putridly in losing a barn burner to bottom feeder Arizona 10-3. The city’s governing health organ chose to invoke a stipulation based on overt pathological caution surrounding Covid-19 as which barred starting quarterback Chase Garbers, 23 teammates, and five coaches from making the conference game road trip, a controversial and ill-advised debacle of decision which will probably result in legal ramifications as the overbearing shackles government hampering free will has been seminal issue in the form of stifling lockdowns and insufferable mandates. Obviously, distracted and missing key components, the Golden Bears helped the Wildcats avert the dubious possibility of being only the second conference team to finish a season 0-12.
According to a news release from the university, 99% of Cal’s student athletes are fully vaccinated, however, the failure of the city of Berkley and the incongruence with Pac-12 conference policy led to the enforced protocol of standing the affected players at home. With a new rule in place that automatically slaps a forfeit on a team cancelling a game, there was no chance that the Golden Bears were not going to compete in Tucson, even though the roster was considerably thinned. Already embroiled in scandal for failing to launch the 2020 season until November and under the tutelage of the indelible Larry Scott, the conference is an afterthought nationally pertaining to on the field results, but is a steady stream popcorn snacking inducing content with the latest blunder, and the hijinks of former WSU coach Nick Rolovich, and current (for now) UW coach Jimmy Lake providing unfunny slapstick that rivals the flailing schtick of Saturday Night Live skits overflowing in the tepid mediocrity of low hanging fruit.
Last year, it was the inability of Santa Clara County to handshake with the Pac-12 in unleashing a measure that made it impossible for California and Stanford to hold full practices and scrimmages. Most recently, the city of Berkley’s failure to sign off on a waiver negating the conference’s senseless iron clad requirement that fully vaccinated student athletes must isolate for 10 days after a positive result, may have cost Cal a realistic chance at a bowl game. The propensity of health departments on the left coast to continually disrupt sporting events and activities throughout the duration of the pandemic in enforcing overtly cautious directives that do not necessarily align with established truths or empirical evidence is indicative of a draconian hierarchy overreaching into personal freedoms. As recommendations evolve into fear-mongering dogma and manifesting in a “health emergency”, the absence of protections against an unyielding procedural force is detrimental to the economy and long-term mental health.
Understandably, the families of the players were livid in the resulting chaos set forth by disjointed policy and politicized science. While the self-driving vehicle wreck of the headless Pac-12 leadership set the unsavory precedent of being a laughingstock through every conceivable variety of optics and perspectives and the ineptitude of conference officials, athletic directors, and elected officials to effectively communicate the abomination 2020 once again reared its ugly head in unacceptable and reprehensible fashion. However, within the self-righteous and undeserving progressive ecosystem piloted by snarky pseudo-intellectual elitists, middle America will always be second class citizens based on ideology, when in fact the powers that be in the in Big-Ten are adept and blessed with a munificence of critical thinking skills and an affinity for nuances in forging institutions where the duality of academic prowess and competitive excellence can flourish. While the majority of politicians in the Midwest are still acquainted with the concept of moderate, the overwhelming perpetuity and shade of blue emanating from California and impeding the sun, is beyond reproach.
As bureaucracy is more slovenly than legalism, the noxious protocols now in the arsenal of public health organizations in nullifying common law for the sake of “public safety”, will be nearly impossible to neutralize, as the government response to Covid-19 is the gift that keeps on giving, and just in time for the holidays. A proportion of residents on the West coast have been indoctrinated in responding viscerally to propaganda, which is nightmare for the near future of collegiate athletics, especially those within the reactionary footprint governed by ideological zealots acting our their Orwellian fetishes. While complicit in causing the mess in the logistics of revenue generating sports, there exists no accountability or subsequent consequences, as barring 24 football players from traveling is somehow for the “greater good”. One can interpret the ambiguous phrase of purported benefits on society to infer the ominous agenda of tyrants disguised as elected officials.
