Jockstrap Sports Return to Normal as Oklahoma Leads in Covid-19

 Jockstrap Sports Return to Normal as America Dances to the Covid Cabrera and Oklahoma becomes a ​Leader in Covid-19 Cases

In America, only one in 4,233 high school athletes will ever play in professional sports (1); only 2.1 percent of college athletes will play in professional sports (2); never-the-less, 64 percent of fledging athletes believe they have a “reasonable chance of making the pros.

Challenging these culturally-embedded aspirations, Covid-19 has placed a new penalty on pursuit of traditional capitalist enterprises, to include air travel, political rallies and jock sports. For many American universities, academic achievements are merely “loss leaders” for the main money maker: sports. Oklahoma University, Ohio State, Texas A&M, Norte Dame, USC, Georgia Tech and a myriad of other jock colleges annually inform TV viewers that their student bodies exist only to cheer madly.

But it’s hard to yell through a mask, or tackle a half-back adhering to “social distancing” rules. So the stadiums are quarter-filled; the coaches wear masks, while the aspiring athletes carry on as usual. And colleges become the Petri-dishes for Covid-19.

The sports-versus-academic battle reflects the larger science-versus-capitalist economy battle that sets the political parameters of the 2020 elections. Given the American craze for sports that sell soap, the elections are toss-ups.

Meanwhile, in Radio-Free Oklahoma, the hapless governor (1^st state governor to contract Covid-19) has again been caught with his pants down as he suppressed a White House order to require masks. (3) The state is one of five “Red States;” 4^th in the Nation with 26 Covid cases per 100,000 residents, but its health department website plays it down and spotlights statistics that gloss the true cause of the soaring infection rates: the Trump Rednecks, like their Oklahoma governor, refuse to wear masks.

Although the signs at the Atoka County Walmart say you cannot enter without a mask, once inside, the good old boys and their women rip them off and march proudly up-and-down the isles. The pace of new infections is twice that of adjacent Johnston County where mask wearing is publicly debated but schools, businesses and most of the public generally adhere to “science.” 

While Atoka County’s fiasco is glossed-over by Gov. Stitt’s obedient Oklahoma Health Department’s graphs, it remains a conspicuous hot spot in all objective nation-wide data.

(1) Let’s get real with college athletes about their chances of going pro, Angela Farmer, The Conversation         April 24, 2020

(2) Trump claims Big Ten football was “totally dead” before he intervened, Washington Post, Sept. 17, 2020      

(3) Coronavirus Maps: How Severe Is Your State's Outbreak? NPR, Sept. 20, 2020