Our rage at the harm college athletes have been subjected to this summer finally runneth over in this new @EndofSportPod piece for @chronicle/ @ChronicleReview. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Canceling-the-College-Football/249198?key=O01RVfHGcmvIBQW9wWAeoNEUFVBVFcYW-0Abd_LAxfA8DHLaLapX5n7dLOFaNZkoWm81S2xEXzJGWURfT0hmN09WYUZ4bE9Gc3pnTllGVml0anloZ0hXTzNkRQ

At this point, any person with a speck of concern for the plight of campus athletic workers understands that the college football season needs to be cancelled.

That's a basic truth, but it's also not nearly enough.

On campuses across the country, coaches, athletic directors, and other university officials have knowingly exposed their unpaid athletic workers to a virulent global pandemic.

They must be held accountable for the harm that has already been done.

As epidemiologist of sport @zbinney_NFLinj puts it: "When the burden is as high as it is on college athletics departments to provide a safe environment for summer workouts, bringing students back without the ability to do regular COVID-19 testing was unconscionable."

We agree.

Universities across the country owe their athletes restitution for the harm they have suffered.

They owe them compensatory damages. They owe them lifelong health insurance. They owe them union rights to ensure this can never happen again.

They also need to be held accountable for the absolute hypocrisy of proclaiming that Black Lives Matter, while out of the other side of their mouth instructing unpaid Black athletic workers to toil during an uncontrolled contagion.

Galling as it is, nothing unis have done during the pandemic is unique to these conditions. Rather, it's an extension of the time-honored inhumane logic of college football: sacrifice the minds and bodies of unpaid, disproportionately racialized player-workers to line AD coffers.

We think it's time for the harm to stop.

Thanks as always to the best editor in the business: DOCTOR @maximillian_alv.