I won't downvote you, because I see where you are coming from. However, you have to (hopefully) admit that when Ohio State makes the statement with this video like they did yesterday, it's news in the Ohio State football world and something we're going to cover as part of our goal to provide comprehensive coverage of Ohio State athletics.

We don't see this as a political statement. To us, it's a human rights statement.

We are getting asked why we're not speaking out about the looting and rioting, and yeah, that sucks, but we're also not speaking out about some of the not so great things we've seen from police in the last few days as well. We're focusing on a single, positive message: that black lives matter.

This is clearly very important to Ohio State players, coaches (as you can see in the video above), and leadership, and it's important to us. If that upsets anyone here, we're probably not the right site for them. There are plenty of other sites which will remain silent on this matter, but we're not going to be one of them.

I realize you may have good intentions with that comment, but a lot of people of color feel that is a problematic response. Yes, every decent person on the planet agrees that all human life matters, life of all colors is important. However, when "all lives matter" is a first response to this, it makes a segment of our population – one that's been discriminated against and marginalized for decades – feel like they are not being heard.

Here's another way to frame it: After 9/11, if someone was going around posting ”all buildings matter“ that would be pretty ridiculous and tone-deaf, right?

Good stuff, Fatpants. Thank you.

Thank you for writing this. When the pandemic hit, we did pull back on the reins a bit because I thought folks could use an outlet to vent. People were anxious, concerned, and more, especially early on. I do agree that we need to tighten things up again, and we'll begin doing just that.

In the meantime, and well into the future, please use the voting buttons – not to boost or suppress things that you agree or disagree with, but instead, to help us model good and bad comments. If it's a good comment, I'd urge everyone to vote it up. If the comment violates our commenting policy, vote that down, please.

I hope this comment is read by some of our habitual line steppers because we'll very quickly be returning to a no-tolerance policy for political comments.

(A quick note on leaving comments open on some of these articles… I want to continue to do that because I think it exposes the bad apples and makes them easier to find. If you notice we are very, very careful not to editorialize things. What that means, for those who don't know, is that when we post news, we don't accompany that news with writing that essentially says "this is good/bad." Take the Seth Towns piece on the front page. That absolutely is news and something we're going to cover, but if you read the article, it's written as neutrally as it can be from our perspective, even though as individuals, we all have thoughts on the matter.)

It's honestly embarrassing that Priestas would allow such fucking drivel (such as the Dewine/Acton thread) on 11W.

We're in trying times and everyone is stressed the hell out. We're trying to keep that in mind – if it helps folks to vent a little, then maybe that's a good thing (and mods are still actively nuking egregious posts). Please don't confuse that with an endorsement of some of these stances and opinions.

Good question. My only thought is that they are going to want to boost the production value and may need tall stands on each side for that crazy spider cam that traverses wires.

More? Wait, Andy is sending you bourbon?

It definitely doesn't help your CFP case to lose your last regular season game, but there are scenarios right now in which that could happen, like Ohio State starting a dominant 11–0 before losing a close one on the road in Ann Arbor, while the rest of the nation was saddled with one- or two-loss teams.

In fact, something similar happened recently…

And once the field expands to 8 teams, which will happen in the next 10 years, this scenario becomes a lot more likely.

Give the American public some credit. Your average "criminally stupid" redneck knows the difference between the Chinese family that is part of the community and the CCP in Beijing.

I never used the words "American" or "redneck." And yes, the world is full of criminally stupid people. That's why jails exist, #FloridaMan is a thing, we hold Darwin Awards, and we have warnings on washers telling you not to climb inside before having someone run. The average person is not going to attack an innocent Chinese person, but to act like those things don't happen is a little naive. We're seeing it now in China with African immigrants attacked. We've seen it in Europe through the ages and we've seen it in this country.

But go ahead and cover your ass with worried wokeness over the unwashed masses who don't posses your enlightened consciousness.

Is this where we are now? Where you're accused of being "woke" when pointing out something that could lead to innocent people getting hurt or worse? Is that where we want to be as a society?

I'm sure we'll hear a lot of that down the road if these trends hold. The problem, I think, with saying that right now is it would encourage people to rush back out into things, ditching precautions.

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty certain they're using a model from the Ohio State University's epidemiology and infectious disease teams.

What gets lost a lot of times is that this is all unchartered territory. Even the pros and leading doctors and researchers are operating with one eye blind. Modeling in and of itself is hard. I feel comfortable in saying that nearly everyone working on this around the world has humanity's best interests in mind. That doesn't mean they aren't going to make mistakes or that they're never wrong. With lives on the line, human nature will also plan for the worst. They'd much rather have the models be high than low. When this is over, we may never know if we did too much. But we'll absolutely know if we didn't do enough.

One last thought on models… It's interesting to me that there are a lot of people who fault models here in the United States for being too high and, at the same time, fault China for lying, obfuscating, and trying to cover things up. Guess where a lot of the data that formed our initial models here came from? 

I personally think the Chinese government will face a day of reckoning for not being forthcoming. However, I think calling it the “Chinese Virus” is dangerous because the world is full of criminally stupid people and someone, no doubt, will hear that and assault an innocent Chinese-American out in public.

Maybe a better name for it that may prevent these kinds of hate crimes is the “Xi Jinping Virus” or something. I don't know.

For what it's worth, I also thought your 12th Warrior comment made elsewhere in this thread was unwarranted. These are unprecedented times and we're trying to get through them just like everyone else. The post didn't editorialize Acton's award, we're not saying whether it was worthy or unworthy. It's fine if you don't like reading news about what's happening in our state. It's even fine to think she did not deserve an award but to lash out by saying "one more reason not to become a 12th Warrior" is frankly a little petty.

Wait, the NFL has a random STD testing policy?

Appreciate the post and there are probably corners of the internet to wade into Harbaugh’s stance on abortion but 11W is not the place. I’m gonna shut the comments off to prevent this from getting away from us. 

We're definitely taking some punches, that's for sure, but I'm very optimistic about our ability to bounce back. I have faith in the American people and movies, concerts, sporting events, vacations, bars, restaurants, and everything else currently on hold are not going to go away forever once we get on the other side of this.

Love this. Once we get to the other side, please reach out if you're interested in writing more about the lacrosse program(s).

What's the agenda, then? PUNISH SPORTS FANS 2020?

We wouldn't run something like this unless we were 1000% right.

Maybe? But I guess it's better to be safe than sorry. All it takes is a few dozen students getting sick and everyone will be roasting university leadership for not suspending classes.

Students are on spring break right now, so it's essentially a 14-day quarantine for them before they return to Columbus.

Thanks for putting these out! Really informative for the LAX fans on the site.

By all means, please do. Start with the forums and then if it's something you feel like you enjoy covering, ping me. I'd love to cover the hockey teams again.

Yep, teams are certainly playing more games these days, which is why we also included a win% line in the chart, which controls for that a bit.

Thank you! It's always nice to read things like this.