CBC Editorial: Wednesday, June 30, 2021; Editorial #8680
The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company.
For the N.C. State University baseball program, memories of the 2021 season will be of a Cinderella NCAA World Series championship season being undone by the COVID pandemic.
Eight Wolfpack players tested positive for the virulent Delta variant of COVID and the team was removed from the competition.
As N.C. State Athletic Director Boo Corrigan made clear in interviews, the NCAA COVID protocols were clear and the same for all competitors. For N.C. State University, choices about being vaccinated were up to the athletes. “We do all we can to work to educate. To answer questions, to be available. But at the end of the day, it’s that individual’s choice,” he said in an
interview on WFAN-FM radio earlier this week. “And we’re going to move ahead.”
It is the policy of the University Of North Carolina system to offer “strong encouragement” of vaccination but is strictly voluntary because “no state or federal public health official has mandated the COVID19 vaccine or even recommended that it be mandated for any population groups, including university students,” said
UNC President Peter Hans in an April 29 memo.
Little has been revealed about the COVID protocols and behaviors that NCSU baseball players and staff – particularly those who had not been vaccinated – had in place to prevent exposure to and spread of the virus. N.C. State needs to report on what the protocols were for the teams vaccinated and unvaccinated players, how those protocols were enforced and if, how, who and when those protocols may have been violated.
Were any of the eight players who tested positive also vaccinated?
If there were protocols in place and players or team staff didn’t follow them, State’s baseball program has no where to point the blame for their predicament other than at themselves.
If the protocols were followed, it was just a sad and tough break.
With few facts or details known, the state’s GOP reflexively sprang to make it a wedge issue in hopes of enhancing their political standing regardless of the hurt suffered by the university, the team and the fans.
Getting vaccinated against measles, tetanus, whooping cough and a host of other diseases –
immunizations required of most UNC System students -- isn’t about politics. It is not about individual health. Most significantly, it’s about community health and making sure others are not afflicted.
Health of individuals and the community was the last thing on the minds of GOP politicians including state House Speaker Tim Moore, U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, Senate candidate and former Gov. Pat McCrory and U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis.
“The NCAA was wrong in disqualifying the N.C. State Baseball Team and denying the team a chance at the national championship,”
Moore said. The NCAA was right – as N.C. State’s athletic director has
even confirmed. Moore talks like a sore loser. Good sports don’t blame others.
“The pandemic is over,”
wrote Bishop – a prime architect of HB2 when he was a state legislator which made so many college athletes unwelcome in the state and forced competitions to be moved elsewhere.
Pandemic over? Where’s Bishop been? Since June 25, there have been 37 COVID deaths in the state and nearly 750 nationwide.
The state ranks in the bottom half of those who have been vaccinated –
45% of adults have received at least one dose while
39% have been fully vaccinated.
If there’s a champion from any of this, it is McCrory for pandering. "The NCAA may have tried to CANCEL the NC State Wolfpack, but we won't let their nonsense continue,”
McCrory said via Twitter.
So, he’s created a “petition” to “DEMAND the NCAA President be FIRED.” What he didn’t confess is that it is really a shameless façade to harvest names and email addresses of potential supporters and donors. Lest there be any question, McCrory’s petition uses the “
WinRed” application – “the official secure payments technology designed to help GOP candidates and committees”
There’s no getting around the unfortunate end to N.C. State’s effort. The accomplishments and disappointments of the N.C. State baseball program shouldn’t be fodder for exploitive efforts by self-serving politicians who seek profit by division and distortion.
