Locked On Hawkeyes - Daily Podcast On Iowa Hawkeyes Football & Basketball - Big Ten parents want answers from Kevin Warren | Is there any hope for a fall football season? | Iowa loses out on commit to Wisconsin

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

In the wake of the Big Ten canceling Fall sports, the parents of several programs have demanded answers from Kevin Warren. Justin FIelds has also started a petition garnering over 100K in signatures. Is this enough to save the Fall sports season? It's certainly possible, but we will break it all down on today's show.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I thank God I was born on the good arms of the Midwest, and not on the battlefields of the U.S. It's a time of panic, and it's intercepted! It's picked off right away! Intercepted by Marty Hooker! Pick six! Eight seconds into the game! Buffen sets up deep in the pocket, goes down the field for Smith!

Oh! He's got it! Smith! Touchdown. 85 yards. High on. Touchdown, 10. Taking a shot in the end zone.

It is caught. No offense. Touchdown. That's either one or you have it. Go ahead and three. Yes. Two-point lead for the Hawkeye Nation, to another episode of the Locked On Hawkeyes podcast, your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Locked On Sports Network.

I am your host, Andrew Wade, and today's episode is brought to you by rockauto.com. Amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car will ever need. And first and foremost, again, I want to start off the show by wishing, you know, hoping everyone is safe out there, hoping everyone's able to get the assistance and whatnot they need. I know times are really tough in the Iowa area, still dealing with the significant damages and aftermath of the derecho from last week. So I just wanted to make sure everyone realizes that you are my thoughts and prayers.

I'm not in the state of Iowa anymore, but I do have a lot of family and friends that have been impacted by that. So I just wanted to quickly make sure I made that known that I am thinking about you. I know thoughts can only do so much, but I am thinking about you all out there and hope everyone is getting the help they need as quickly as possible. Jumping into the sports aspect, though, on today's show, we're going to be breaking down some of the stuff that happened over the weekend, specifically with the aftermath of coronavirus and what's going to happen in the Big Ten. There's been a lot of significant developments going on this past couple of days, especially from the parent angle. So I want to kind of basically cover all that. What does that mean going forward? significant developments going on this past couple of days, especially from the parent angle. So

want to kind of basically cover all of that. What does that mean going forward? What have they been doing? And can the parents movement actually work? Can Justin Fields movement actually work? We're going to be breaking that all down on today's episode. If you are tuning in for the first time, and after listening to this awesome show, you love what you heard, please make sure to give us that five-star review. Subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast app. And if you have social media, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We have some great episodes coming up this week.

Obviously, anything that comes up that's kind of breaking news, we'll make sure to cover on the show. But we do have a few interviews that we're going to be dropping as well. Over the next couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks, we have an interview with Luca Garza's father, Frank Garza. We have an interview with Matt Dermody, former Iowa Hawkeye baseball player and current member of the Chicago Cubs organization.

And we have an interview with Mike Dom, the guy who was going to be playing on the Iowa United this summer, but ended up playing with the House of Pain for that Fighting Illini alumni team. He's a member of the South or alumni of the South Dakota State Jackrabbits, but great guy. I wanted to get his perception of the bubble and the TBT tournament. I thought, you know, it's not necessarily Iowa Hawkeye related, but I thought it'd be really fun to hear his interview. Great guy to talk to. You'll love chatting with him and he's a great basketball player as well. And we

also have another special interview that I'm going to wait until that actually gets recorded before I drop that information as to when that might be coming out as well. So let's jump into it though. Let's do a quick Monday roundup. We haven't done one of these in a couple weeks just because there's been so much going on in the community and whatnot, especially with the Big Ten and whether or not there was going to be a season or not. So on the basketball front, Tyler Cook did get some action in a game August 14th, this past Friday. The Nuggets have already secured a playoff spot, so they're getting some of their bench guys some time. He had 16 minutes of action, went one for two, and scored

four points and had four rebounds and a loss to the Raptors. Good to see him get some playing time. He did a really great job defensively, which is definitely an improvement over what we've seen from him in the past and whatnot. So great to see Cook getting some action there. Hopefully he can be at least a key member off the bench. You know, they have a very deep bench with the Denver Nuggets, but it'd be great to see him get a few minutes in the playoffs and see him support that team as they continue to make a run there. In the WNBA, Megan Gustafson did get three minutes of playing time

in the Wings loss on Friday to Seattle, but did not record a stat. She also recorded a did not play a DMP on yesterday, actually, against the Mercury. I also, to be fair, there's three minutes left in the game when I'm recording this, and she hasn't played yet. So I'm assuming she did not actually get in the game since it was a close game. And also Kathleen Doyle got some big playing time against the Sparks, and the Fevers lost to the Sparks 90-76 on Saturday. She got 12 minutes and 15 seconds of playing time,

going 2-4 from the field, 1-1 from 3, had a plus-minus of negative 4, and contributed two rebounds. So again, great performance, I think, by her, just getting extra minutes for the Fever. Every time she gets those opportunities, she needs to be able to take advantage of those so she can continue to get more playing time. And I think I talked about this when the draft happened.

I think Kathleen Doyle, her game fits the WNBA better than maybe a Megan Gustafson coming out of college simply because Gustafson was an undersized center with great center moves for, you know, underside forward with great forward moves. So she was really a smaller person playing kind of big, big player type basketball. So she's been trying to reconstruct her game and develop more of an outside shot. So Kathleen Doyle definitely had a, I say a more likely path, better skill set fitted for the WNBA, not saying she's necessarily better, but great to see her perform well. And then on the recruiting front, we had Skylar Bell on the show a couple

days ago to talk about his top five choices. They were Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, and Rutgers, and talk a little bit about what was going into that decision. At that time, he had not made a decision. We talked about it offline too. He said, I have not made a decision. I'm not sure where I'm going yet. He obviously liked each of the programs, thought there were good aspects of each of those. Based on that conversation, I had a pretty good feeling he was going within the Big Ten. He spoke very highly about the Big Ten. was committing to the University of Wisconsin, which is, you know, when I talked to him, I said, if you can go anywhere, just make sure it's not Wisconsin. But obviously I don't have that much pull with the kid I didn't expect to anyways. But congratulations to Skyler Bell. It is a loss for Iowa in two ways.

They don't have a freak athlete at wide receiver coming to play with them. A six foot one kid who runs a 4-4-40 and jumps 42 inches in the vertical. That's insane athleticism. He's now going to be at Wisconsin, which means Iowa has to deal with him. A 6'1 kid who runs a 4-4-40 and jumps 42 inches in the vertical, that's insane athleticism. He's now going to be at Wisconsin, which means Iowa has to deal with that and Graham Mertz, their four-star quarterback who they are really high on once Jack Cone does graduate. He's going to be a difficult piece for Iowa to handle, but that being said, from an Iowa recruiting standpoint, it doesn't hurt the class a ton. Honestly, when I thought about it, I wasn't sure how that would all play out. That would be three wide receivers in this class,

a class that has Keegan Johnson and Brody Brecht. Those are big, big guys that I was very excited about who could get playing time relatively early. So I wasn't really sure where. Obviously, Skyler Bell's a talented player. I'm sure he would have matched up well with those two as well. But that's a lot of guys and not a lot of spots, especially considering how well Iowa has done recruiting wide receivers

over the last couple years. Nonetheless, sad to see Iowa not get him happy for the kid. Happy he's going to a good Big Ten program. Wisconsin is a great program. No matter how much I wish they sucked, they are a good program. And so I do wish them the best no matter what. That does it, though, for our kind of Monday roundup, our recap of kind of the smaller news that happened over the weekend.

Coming up on segment number two, we're going to break down all the revelations that have happened with the Big Ten football season, what the players have been doing, what the parents have been doing, and then following that on segment number three, we're going to be talking about can this actually work? Could what they're doing actually work and how would it work? That will be coming up on segment number two. Before we jump into that, though, I do have a great message for you

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your daily podcast covering your Iowa Hawkeyes on the Lockdown Sports Network. And as I said before we took a quick break, wanted to break down what has been going on. So as you know, if you've been following Iowa Hawkeye football or even just Big Ten football or college football in general, and if you follow the show, you would definitely know this as well, but the Big Ten made the decision to suspend fall sports. And that did not sit well with a lot of people, especially after the Big 12, ACC and SEC basically

came out and said, we're going to move forward. The evidence says that we should be moving forward. There's been interesting stats and figures that have also come out that I've found very interesting that kind of supports that argument as well. And so the Big Ten parents are not happy, and I don't blame them. So let me just, I'm going to kind of do on segment number two, kind of walk through what has happened since the Big Ten has canceled football and go through a few of the pieces of information and give a little bit of my tidbits.

And then finally on segment number three, I'll talk about what this means. But basically, there are four Big Ten schools that are teaming up. Their parents are teaming up to write letters to Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren and address certain topics within that. Those four teams are the Huskers, the Ohio State Buckeyes, the Penn State Nittany Lions, and Iowa. These four schools, they want answers and I don't blame them. When the Big Ten decided to cancel the fall sports season, the information they did it based off of was, what I can tell, relatively piss poor at best.

And if you want more information on the information they, more information on the information, that's funny, but if you want more information on what they kind of based some of their decisions on, check out the Twitter account, Prof D Francis, P R O F D Francis, F R A N C I S. He did a great kind of mock-up of the paper that the big 10 based information on as far as cardiac issues, long-term cardiac issues for people that have coronavirus. So he did a kind of a nice take on what the paper said and what the abnormalities were and what the inconsistencies were of that paper. And I think when you combine that data that seemingly isn't the best, even I believe the PAC-12 commissioner, the PAC-12 doctors talked about, they didn't really see what the big 10,

they didn't really agree with the information that big 10 was using. I mean, granted the PAC 12 did cancel their season, but that makes it very interesting. And then you look at the fact that right now on the big 10 medical council, right? They have one infectious disease expert. council, right? They have one infectious disease expert. They have zero heart specialist and zero mental health specialist. So you're telling me a double digit person council contained one person out of three necessary fields required to make a, an informed decision on the long-term impacts of coronavirus to these student-athletes, make the long-term analysis of what's going to happen with their heart conditions and whatnot. So you're telling me they did this based off of what seems like pretty poor analysis with a lot of holes. And granted, with coronavirus, it is tough because it is new to everyone.

There's a lot of ever-develop developing information kind of going on with this. So you can't you know, everything you see, there's always gonna be more information coming out very soon, just because this is a brand new subject. But they did all this and there were only there's only one person, an infectious disease expert, not even a cardiologist or a mental health expert, making these decisions about postponing fall sports until potentially the spring. And I think the mental health thing is something that I didn't even think about. But, you know, sometimes for some players, football is a way to get out. Football is their way of handling mental health things.

And so you also have to consider that when you're thinking about fall sports and especially in the football front. You know, what are the long term impacts of coronavirus? Well, we know the long-term impacts are the other injuries and it's bad. Football is a very dangerous sport. Every time they step on the field, they could lose their life. So it does make it kind of difficult to see why they would make that decision. And then you factor in the fact that people are going back to school. There was pictures floating around from, you know, kids at college campuses and aims at Iowa state, big, big old parties. So you're telling me that 50, you know, sorry, 90 to a hundred players are safer, not playing football, but still being in

the dorm, still being in their apartments, still being out and about not having that structure of football. And that, that desire to, to be safe because of football, right? I mean, you're exposing these kids to more risk. And then what was even more interesting is Oklahoma actually had a week off of practice. 25% of their players went home, they said. And out of those 25%, so we could say maybe 100 players. So let's say 25 players went home and 75 stayed in, in Oklahoma on the campus,

whatever nine players who went home afterwards came back with coronavirus. And that speaks volumes to the stuff that, you know, Trevor Lawrence was saying that players are safer on campus in these programs where they're getting tested consistently than they are at home. Then they are in their college communities. When you have football, it gives you a,

a thing to look forward to a, it gives you a thing to look forward to, a thing to work towards, a thing to stay accountable because of. And without that, why would these players want, I mean, they're not going to be concerned about, look at, I mean, they're college students. I know if I were in college and coronavirus is going on, I can honestly say, I probably would think it's dumb, not dumb that people are dying. I think, you know, but when I was in college, I would be like, I'm healthy. I'll be fine. I'll be good. I'm going to go to party parties. Now, granted, I'm, you know, it's 10 years later and I definitely don't feel like that way anymore, but I was dumb and in college and I get it. And I would have gone

to parties too and done all that stuff, even if there was coronavirus. So I think that is something that to really factor into these decisions of these players, who knows what they're going to do if they don't have football this season. It also impacts their livelihood. Some of these guys, we talked about it on previous shows, there's a couple guys that have fringe NFL draft prospects. They needed a senior season. They needed a big season to be able to get on that radar, to be able to get an opportunity to play.

So what has happened since then is parents are banding together, like I said. They are coming together to make noise about what is going on. In Iowa's letter to Kevin Warren, they requested a meeting with the commissioner. They wanted answers to their questions. They wanted transparency first and foremost. And they wanted a response by August 19th. In Ohio State's letter, they wanted to reinstate. They were a little bit more demanding on this one,

they wanted to reinstate the August 5th schedule. They wanted transparency regarding decision making. They wanted a Zoom call with the players and the parents and Kevin Warren. They wanted to allow teams that are prepared to play to play and allow teams that are not prepared to play to not play. You look at Rutgers, they have what seems like a coronavirus outbreak within the program. Maybe that's a team that decides to take a year off. And honestly, they probably need

to anyways if they're trying to rebuild that program under Greg Shano. But also, Ohio State said they wanted a detailed action plan regardless. Penn State's letter didn't get a hold of the letter, but one of the parents spoke out and they said, where are the answers at in regards to eligibility, to scholarships, to

roster spots, fifth-year seniors, incoming freshmen, recruits, impacts in the NFL? There's no answers coming from the Big Ten. And when you don't have answers, what I've learned in my profession is when you don't have answers, it just creates more questions. If you're able to address the questions immediately, you don't allow people to swirl and start thinking about all these other things. But when you don't address those questions, people are going to have even more questions and more concern and people are going to start talking and it's going to get worse and worse and worse because you're not addressing it. So by not addressing it, you're actually making the problem even worse than what you would have had you just said literally anything. Two parents I want to shout out for kind of leading this charge

is Stuart Duncan and Maurice Goodson. Maurice has been a big proponent of getting that letter in place, it sounds like. And Stuart Duncan has been very active on Twitter trying to point out the different stats and whatnot kind of going on. Also, Justin Fields started a petition. And as of 1249 Mountain Standard Time, there were over 100,000 signatures saying they want to play. So I think that speaks volumes, again, to the public perception, the public needs and wants with college football.

And the fact that three major conferences are still playing and the Big Ten isn't, it just looks bad on the Big Ten, and especially the way the Big Ten has handled it. But that being said, I want to get into what that all means and what the impacts are kind of going forward and what my thoughts are. And we'll be covering that on a segment number three. So stay tuned with us for after a few quick messages from our sponsors and we'll get right back into the show. All right, we are back with our third and our final segment of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast today on this Monday morning. And before the break, we talked a lot about the news that has come out and what the information has been, what the information presented to us has been in regards to coronavirus.

So I want to talk about what it means now. And I first want to say I commend the players and the parents that are coming together to fight for what they believe in. I commend the parents that they're not doing this. They're not doing this because their kids beg them to. They're doing this because they understand what their kids need and want, and they're trying to help as much as possible. I also commend Justin Fields. He's in a very interesting position. He is going to be a first-round prospect.

If the draft were to be held tomorrow, he would be a first-round pick. He does have a lot riding on this season, though. he would be a first-round pick. He does have a lot riding on this season, though. He was only a one-year starter. He also needs this season. But that being said, he would be fine. He would be a first-round pick, and that will set you up for life, just getting that opportunity to be a first-round pick.

But he's fighting for all the players who are not first-round picks. He's fighting for his Ohio State teammates who are not guaranteed to be in the NFL, who need the opportunity to shine and show what they can do for the NFL. And starting a petition is just showing kind of the power of these players' voices. And I think it's incredible to see him leading that charge. If anything, I think it just shows a lot, you know, tells a lot about his character and what he's bringing to the table. This is a kid who could have decided, I'm going to transfer. I'm going to leave because we don't have fall football.

I'm going to go to another school and start and then go to the NFL. But he's sticking with Ohio State and he's trying to get football back. So what does this actually mean? Could this actually work? I'll be honest. I don't think we could start, you know, as quickly as we wanted to, but I do think the Big Ten could follow a similar concept to what the Big 12 is doing, delayed start in late September. The reason why that would have to happen is you look at programs like Iowa who fought to have a Big Ten season. They ultimately decided to not have practice for the next couple of weeks because there's not a season to get ready for. They would have to get players back on campus, make sure they're quarantined, make sure they're

safe, get the testing done, all that good stuff before kind of getting into practice. And they don't have a ton of time to prepare. So I think the only way this could happen is if they decide to push back to the end of September and then kind of go through that schedule again. Also, it'd be tough because basically the big, it's a tough situation because the Big Ten has made their decision. Whether I agree with it or not, they made their decision. Are they going to be stubborn? Do they decide, you know, we are not going to give in to the pressure of parents, of players, all that stuff.

It's interesting because Kevin Warren has a kid that's playing in the SEC and the SEC is playing. So how does that work? Does the Big Ten give in? I think that would be monumental if the players and parents were able to come together and actually get that to happen. That would be just crazy to see that development happen. But how would it actually work? I mean, there's a new test that came out that Yale has been working with the NBA with that can give results very quickly. They would also help and at a cheaper cost. So that's good.

I think in general, the NCAA, what this is showing me is that the NCAA needs to have an actual leadership that's making decisions for the entire group. We cannot have these conferences making decisions. They're setting themselves up for disaster in the NCAA, especially at the college football level with conferences being responsible for themselves. You look at this from a, I'm not going to get into it, but from a coronavirus standpoint too, you look at what states are doing and what states are not doing because they were allowed the opportunity to do it themselves. And you see states like Arizona that's really struggling. And you see states like Arizona that's really struggling.

And you see states like Colorado, who's been, for the most part, as good as you could probably get from a coronavirus standpoint because the different states have different regulations. I equate that similarly to the conferences. I do think there needs to be a standard governing body controlling the rest of the NCAA and making these decisions for the conferences. So we do not have an SEC, a Big 12, and an ACC playing and a Big 10 and Pac-12 not playing. Now I'm not saying they should play. I'm just saying that it doesn't make sense why three conferences would, one conference or two conferences

wouldn't and high school football in Iowa is being played and yet the Iowa Hawkeyes are not. So I just personally, for me, I want to get answers from the Big 10 as to why they made this decision, how they came to that decision. I think that would help clear up a lot of things. I would hope if it doesn't, then it's clear to me they didn't make that decision in the right manner. I would like to see the Big 12 actually get some, you know, respectable people that actually have knowledge in these subject areas on the medical board to make some of these advisements. I think they do need to listen to the players and the parents and understand kind of what their concerns are and what the parents and players would love to see happen. You can't just make this decision for these people's livelihoods. These are young adults who are

depending on this opportunity. You need to be able to consider that as well and factor that into your decision. So will this work? I don't know. I think we'll get a lot more information over the course of this week. If there isn't any word from the Big Ten by the end of this week, I say the chances of the Big Ten playing college football this year are incredibly low, even lower than what they already are. However, I do believe in the power of change. I believe the fact that the SEC, the Big 12, and the ACC are playing does play into that factors. I also think that the paper that the Big Ten based a lot of this information off of is getting a lot of interesting counterpoints to it.

And if the Big Ten was smart, I think they'd be better off saying, you know what, we messed up, we made a hasty decision, and here's why we made that decision. And we want to reconsider and reevaluate and figure out what the safest approach is to potentially play football in the fall. And if we can still not come to an agreement to play football in the fall, what can we do for teams? Are teams allowed to play with other conferences or can we actually put together a spring football plan that can actually work? So that's what I hope to see.

That's what I'm expecting to see over the next couple days. That remains to be seen if that actually will happen. I don't have a lot of trust in the Big Ten leadership. I have a lot of trust in the coaches and a lot of faith in the coaches, but not the Big Ten leadership. But it is great to see the power of change and the power of people's voices coming together to try to make a difference with this college football season. That being said though, um,

that will do it for the show today. I'll do it for our lockdown Hawkeyes podcast. Monday episode. We'll be back. I'm not sure if we'll be back tomorrow or Wednesday. We'll definitely be back on Wednesday, but we might have a special episode tomorrow, depending on when I want to drop a couple of those interviews.

Uh, kind of depends on the news that breaks over the next 24 hours and whether or not, um, we have some have some interesting information we need to cover. But stay tuned. We'll definitely have an episode Wednesday and Friday, possibly as well on Tuesday and Thursday.

I do appreciate you all tuning in to today's episode of the Lockdown Hawkeyes podcast, though. If you liked what you heard, give us that five-star review and subscribe wherever you downloaded this podcast app. And make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And as always, hawkeye nation hope you all are safe out there hope you know you're getting your lives back to normal and able

to um you know take care of your loved ones and make sure everyone is safe in your homes and whatnot or getting the repairs and stuff that they need i've seen a lot of really awesome things come out of the iowa communities and that's why i love the state of iowa is you know when things are tough people band together and they make a difference together as a state, regardless of whether the national level is helping or not. It's pretty impressive to see the state of Iowa come together, and I wish I was there to help you all out. But that being said, have a fantastic Monday, Hawkeye Nation,

and let's go Hawks. We'll see you next time.