The specific circumstances of Saturday's last-minute Florida State-Clemson postponement were still being untangled when the typical college football trash talk began.
The No. 4 Tigers had been reckless with a positive coronavirus case. It was their fault.
The Seminoles were five-touchdown underdogs and didn't want to get embarrassed by Clemson (again). It was their fault.
That's how it works around this sport. There's a winner and loser in everything, even games that get called off three hours and change before kickoff.
Forget the message-board spin, and how players from both sides said they were ready and willing to go.
The truth is that the Tigers and Seminoles both were losers in an unfortunate situation. The pandemic remains undefeated.
Officially, the ACC said the game was postponed because the teams' medical personnel "were unable to mutually agree on moving forward."
Unofficially, a Clemson player who traveled with the team to Tallahassee tested positive in Friday's rounds of tests (which are usually reported to teams Friday night or Saturday morning). The Tigers felt comfortable playing; the statement from athletic director Dan Radakovich noted that Clemson "has followed all of the ACC's protocol in preparation for this game." The Seminoles didn't feel comfortable playing. First-year coach Mike Norvell's statement noted that FSU's "first priority is the health of our student-athletes."
It felt like a throwback to the 2016 Hurricane Matthew feud, when LSU suggested Florida was using the storm as an excuse to dodge their annual rivalry game. Norvell said the Seminoles "hope to be able to play Clemson in December," and the teams share an open date on Dec. 12. Radakovich told The State that "somebody would have to pay the cab fare" for the Tigers to return to Tallahassee.
It's natural to want to blame one side or the other. But this isn't an FSU problem, or a Clemson problem, or even a college football problem. It's a societal problem.
Coronavirus cases are spiking across the country. According to The COVID-19 Tracking Project, the United States set records Friday with 193,000 daily cases and 82,000 people currently hospitalized.
College football isn't immune from the community spread. Two weeks ago, the sport set a record with 10 postponements in one week. That number rose to 15 last week and 18 this weekend. FSU-Clemson was the third Florida state postponement of the week, after USF-Navy and Miami-Georgia Tech. The only top-10 team that hasn't yet had a game moved because of an outbreak is Indiana, which, along with the rest of the Big Ten, started its season a month later than the SEC and ACC.
The only thing novel about Saturday morning's news was the initial ambiguity from the ACC and the fact that it was the first of this season's 81 postponements to be announced on game day.
Although there is never a good time for caseloads to rise, the trends are especially problematic through the lens of college football. Teams are running out of time to reschedule games.
No. 12 Miami is still in contention for the ACC title. But the late-season shuffle from its recent positive cases/quarantines means the Hurricanes might play one fewer game before the Dec. 19 ACC championship than Clemson or No. 2 Notre Dame. The SEC still has to sort through its own mess, including the not-yet-rescheduled Alabama-LSU matchup. The inequities will have serious implications, starting when the College Football Playoff selection committee releases its first set of rankings Tuesday.
What happens if the numbers continue to grow, outside and inside the sport? What if there's an outbreak before a conference title game? What about a positive test on the eve of a semifinal, or the Jan. 11 national championship at Miami's Hard Rock Stadium?
There's no easy solution. No obvious scapegoat.
Saturday morning's drama is simply an inevitable side effect of college football during a pandemic, where the only clear winner is a virus that shows no signs of slowing down.
