Authorities have gone overboard with weather suspensions
Yet another sign of our times ... but we must obey authorities, who are allegedly protecting us.
In my opinion, America’s become a nation of ultra-compliant “sheeple” who cede control to experts who are purportedly protecting people too ignorant to know how to protect ourselves.
Covid protocols are the most extreme example of this disturbing trend. However, we increasingly see the same nanny-protector mind frame being applied to more and more prosaic examples.
One example is the increasingly-common trend to suspend college football games for hours because of rain and the “threat” of lightning.
Saturday’s Alabama-South Florida football game was another example of how the experts continue to over-react to virtually non-existent weather-related “death” threats.
After “isolated rain showers,” which must have produced a few lightning strikes in the area, this particular football game, like many others, was delayed for more than an hour.
FWIW, all I saw on TV was a fairly heavy rain shower that lasted maybe 20 minutes. Weather radar showed a few tiny pockets of innocuous rain showers moving through the Tampa area, but it wasn’t the giant mass of red one sees in a large and severe thunderstorm. In fact, when the game was finally resumed, the weather was sunny and beautiful.
In the first week of the season, at least five games were delayed for “weather” reasons. These delays often last many hours.
Emptying the stadium no doubt puts more fans at risk by disbursing tens of thousands of fans into what might be dangerous storm conditions.
For athletes, lightning death risk is
the same as Covid death risk - zero
Of course, the main justification for suspending these games is the “protection of the student athletes.”
However, per my research into lightning deaths, no college, pro or high school athlete has ever died from a lightning strike in a football game. (This “weather geek” contrarian did the same research and found the same thing as I did).
“Ever” means this tragic event has never happened.
Per my research, in 1951, A Class C, non-affiliated minor league baseball player was hit in the head by a lighting strike during a game and died instantly. This is the only death of an American athlete in a sporting event I could find in my research.
I also found one example of a Major League baseball player who was struck by lighting in a game - a player for the Cleveland Indians … in 1919. But the player wasn’t hurt seriously and, in fact, finished the game.
So I will stipulate that athletes can and have been struck by lighting in a game, but this has not caused a fatality in 72 years.
I also did not find any examples of fans at a football game (or any college, pro or high school game) who died from a lightning strike while watching a game inside a stadium.
I did find one story from 2010 about two fans at a Florida high school football game who were injured by lightning during a game. The fans were leaning against a metal fence and lighting apparently struck one of the stadium light polls and the current spread down the fence.
Five fans were injured after a Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ game in 2014 by a lighting strike, but his happened in the parking lot not the stadium and the fans thankfully survived.
I wonder if I’m the only sports fan who thinks these storm safety precautions have now gone way too far.
Also, this “weather delay” fad is a fairly recent development as I can remember several college games from decades ago where the athletes played right through a deluge and neither the players nor the fans were traumatized.
Just like the ridiculous and counter-productive “virus” precautions, I also wonder why almost 100 percent of the population is too timid to criticize these safety over-reactions.
The bigger point is that Americans have apparently become too afraid to criticize or question any “protocol” that is touted as being necessary to “save lives” and “protect” people - even when the purported risk is infinitesimal.
It’s the same old same old … if X “saves even one life,” the precaution is worth it.
A cadre of anonymous officials or “experts” have been given license to inconvenience and hassle the daily lives of millions of people and, given this power, these people are not shy about telling other adults what they can and can’t do.
In my research into this topic, I found these sentences from the authoritative-sounding weather.gov:
“Because electrical charges can linger in clouds after a thunderstorm has seemingly passed, experts agree that people should wait at least 30 minutes after the last thunder before resuming outdoor activities.”
Here, the rubber meets the Nanny road: As we can see, the all-important “experts agree.” What this really means is nobody can disagree with these guidelines because the experts all agree.
From the same article, I found these two sentences:
“The lightning monitor should not be the coach, umpire, or referee, because these people will be busy and can’t adequately monitor conditions. The lightning monitor must know the plan’s guidelines and be empowered to assure that the guidelines are followed.”
So at every game we have a “lightning monitor” whose only job is to know the guidelines and make sure they are followed.
Fans travel hundreds of miles to see college football games. These ever-increasing weather suspensions mean many fans won’t get home until 2 in the morning after some of these 2 to 8-hour weather delays. They won’t have time to eat at a local restaurant after the game, which hurts the local business owners.
The players, who warm up and then cool off (sometimes several times), are forced to sit around for hours in the locker room. Athletic directors have to pay for Subway sandwiches to feed the athletes and support staff during these long delays, which increases their travel expenses and create another logistic headache.
Disney (of course) follows the protocols …
Also, fans watching on TV can’t be amused. This is because the woke, herd-following companies that televise the game are major advocates of any and every “safety protocol.”
For example, the Alabama-USF game was televised by ABC, which is owned by Disney. Disney has a policy that it can’t use all its cameras for X minutes after a weather delay has been ordered.
This meant when play resumed in the Bama game, the television shots were from one or two cameras and looked looked like some mother with a camcorder was televising the game from the bleachers.
Apparently, no producer for ABC was authorized to glance up at the sky, conclude, “The bad weather’s long gone; it’s now sunny and clear” and authorize the camera operators to go back to using their 10 other cameras.
Common sense and independent judgement have been effectively outlawed by iron-clad protocols and guidelines.
But we already knew this from Covid, where athletic directors and commissioners spent years zealously implementing stupid protocol after stupid protocol to “protect” the student-athletes and fans … none of whom needed protecting.
Just like the weather protocols, nobody in sports media possesses the chutzpah to criticize the expensive and unnecessary hassle-inducing protocols. If someone did this, he’d be smeared as a cretin who was against “protecting the people.”
That is, officials know they can suspend a game that didn’t need suspending because they know they’ll never be criticized. In fact, they’ll earn another Virtue-Signaling merit badge.
Conclusion
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against suspending games where the weather gets really scary.
But this rule where officials have to wait 30 minutes before a distant rumble of thunder is heard, and then start the suspension clock over if some distant thunder is heard, is another insult to common sense.
What we’re living though is precaution over-kill, a world where adults can’t decide for themselves if they should stay inside a stadium or not.
If fans forced to leave a game later get struck by lightning or have a car crash while driving in said storm, I guess that’s not the fault of the designated “lightning monitor.”
Similarly, with Covid policies, we know the experts won’t be held responsible for all the citizens who lost their job, or endured the trauma of a loved one who committed suicide because of financial stress … or suffered a vaccine injury.
I often think about the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who would be alive today if the experts hadn’t been given carte blanche power to “protect” us.
As long as the canard “if-we-can-save-one-life” continues to dominate the decision-making of authorities, I guess we’re going to have to get used to all these safety orders.
Heck, what am I talking about? We’re already used to all these protocols.
Until citizens find the courage to tell these authorities to quit protecting us so much, we can be sure Nanny bureaucrats are going to keep ordering us around even more.
I bet I'm the only journalist whose taking on the weather safety czars. I wonder if this column will get past Facebook censors?
The long truth is that most of these "experts" really are not. Doctors that have never seen a patient for example. Meteorologists who are actually readers and have little say in what they're reading. The Weather Channel is notorious for exaggerating the severity of a storm, but still scared people tune in.
I honestly don't know how humanity's has survived for thousands of years without all the experts. But I know none of them give a tinker's dam about anyone's well being.