The Hybrid: Getting High On The Early Slate

By Bobby Loesch on October 28, 2021 at 12:00 pm @bobbystompy
Airplane With Michigan And Iowa Logos On It
© Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK
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The Hybrid is a weekly Big Ten football preview, plus relevant or whimsy games from the national slate.

Going to a Nashville wedding on Friday.

It's my final wedding of the year (wooo), but third in three weeks (oof). Plan is to fly back early enough to make Halloween Saturday in Chicago (super wooo)... but it's during the Iowa *and* Michigan timeslot (super oof).

I'm not a very frugal person, but something about paying for airplane Wi-Fi makes me squirm. Surely will have to bite the bullet in this situation, though. It's gonna be the fastest flight ever.

The Hybrid

"When you're unemployed, that's the real you."

Thursday

N/A

Friday Night Lights

Bartlett (30-seed) at Neuqua Valley (3-seed): Round one of IHSA playoffs, baby! The bad news is Neuqua lost the conference championship game on a walk off scramble TD by QB Aidan Gray (Naperville North). This play is cold (2:58 mark).

So, despite beating Naperville North in the 2021 spring regular season and 2021 fall regular season, they are now conference champs because they beat us last. Classic college foot--oh wait, it's high school we're talking about?

There's also some good news for you and, by affiliation, me:

Neuqua was actually projected as a 2-seed, so the loss really didn't do too much damage, which is good.

Saturday

Cincinnati (2) at Tulane: ok cool go bearcats hook 'em

Michigan (6) at Michigan State (8): Game of the Week. Neither of these look like Top 10 teams to me, but I'm hyped for the game, though it's somewhat mitigated by history:

I did see Sparty has the worst pass defense in the Big Ten, which would be great if Michigan threw more than nine times a game (not a real stat, but a feelings stat).

All of this said, maybe swapping styles will flip the stat on its head.

Iowa (9) at Wisconsin (12): My enthusiasm for Hawkeye football is very low right now, but this game matters, damn it. It really does. And what's nice is, win or lose, we have our barometer for the rest of the way. We win? True care can come back. We lose? It's time to scramble.

Rutgers at Illinois: I tried to watch two different extended highlight packages of Illinois-Penn State, and neither had all nine overtimes included. Annoying. Less annoying? Memes.

One love, Illinois. Thanks for mucking.

Indiana at Maryland: Nothing to say here, so it's time to again say "Come get your sport."

WHO THINKS THIS IS COOL OR GOOD

Iowa State (22) at West Virginia: Y'all are probably mad they're ranked again, but I'll take any SOS win we can get at this point, especially after Penn State.

Washington State at Arizona State: Wazzu lost their first post-Rolo game vs. BYU because, of course, an XP was missed, and everything got all fucked up from there. I can't tell you how many missed short kicks have led to the Cougars' downfall; it's the worst, funniest problem. Speaking of Rolo, prior to his canning, the AD sat him down with Dr. Guy Palmer, a world-renowned WSU regents professor of pathology and infectious diseases. He... said what you thought he'd say.

Over about an hour, Rolovich drove a conversation that focused on topics that were consistent with what Palmer said has been shared by the "anti-vax crowd on social media" over the past several years.

"Kind of typical ones: Is Bill Gates involved with the vaccines? Does [Gates] hold a patent on the vaccines?" Palmer recalled to ESPN. "He asked whether SV40 is in the vaccines and whether that could be a dangerous thing. And the answer to that is no."

SV40, also known as the simian virus 40, was found to have contaminated polio vaccines in the late 1950s and early 1960s. However, multiple studies -- including one from the Institute of Medicine Immunization Safety Review Committee in 2002 -- have not found a link between that contamination and any harmful impacts. No vaccines currently contain SV40, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it's unclear where Rolovich would have gotten the idea it was present in COVID vaccines.

(In a text message exchange with ESPN Tuesday evening, Rolovich described it as a “nice discussion with Dr Palmer” but declined to elaborate or be interviewed further.)

I'll let Lauren Theisen of Defector close this out.

In terms of Rolovich’s immediate future, the most relevant part of all this nonsense is how it seems to contradict the closest thing to a specific reason for not taking the vaccine he has given. After Rolovich’s firing, his attorney stated that “Coach Rolovich has been derided, demonized, and ultimately fired from his job, merely for being devout in his Catholic faith.” That’s already a difficult sell because of the Pope’s endorsement of vaccines, and while some other Catholics have used a hard-line stance against abortion as justification for vaccine hesitancy, it’s very difficult to square the flailing gibberish Palmer here describes with any kind of sincere religious belief. (One wonders if Rolovich has similar ethical objections to Advil or Tums or any number of everyday medications that also used fetal cell lines in their development.) If the conversation indeed happened as it’s relayed, it reads instead like a scared, stupid man desperate for a way to justify a decision he can’t or won’t elucidate, and keep his job.

But even if you don’t give a shit about Rolovich himself—and I don’t blame you if you don’t—it’s frustratingly evident that he is not alone in grasping at vaccine conspiracies. And that’s where the larger issue inherent in this reported discussion becomes evident. A 42-year-old man doesn’t just imagine a phony idea as obscure as SV40 contamination out of thin air. He gets it, more than likely, from a popular source of vaccine disinformation: Fox News, Facebook, Twitter, and the like.

A very credible sequence of events is that Nick Rolovich has a fear of needles, or doesn’t like going to the doctor, has anxiety about medicine, or simply feels a pathological need to rebel against scientific consensus. On the internet in 2021, it’s easier than ever to confirm whatever you want to believe, and to come up with some pseudoscientific justification for it. So once Rolovich saw something that told him he was right, he latched onto it and wouldn’t let go. From there, his refusal to take a vaccine became a part of his identity so powerful that not even millions of dollars, a coveted job, and the survival of his public reputation could shake it. Now, he’s left unemployed, humiliated, and struggling to wring some parachute money out of WSU.

That’s an odd little tragic tale in and of itself, but it becomes a horror story when multiplied by the many millions of Americans who are eligible for the vaccine but have so far declined to get it. Now, there are a variety of explanations for why a given person hasn’t been jabbed, some of which represent shortcomings on the part of the state and not the individual. But plenty of the unvaccinated are like Rolovich—privileged, comfortable, and simply unwilling to get over an irrational fear or admit a miscalculation. And while it’s tempting to blame each and every one of these folks for their failures in judgement, there’s an addictive media machine just saturated with crackpot ideas swaying them in the wrong direction. Those pushing the ideas didn’t create this fear from scratch. But they’re sure as hell profiting off of it.

All of the sighs (all of the sighs).

Georgia (1) vs. Florida: Got a weirdly good Florida feeling in this one (know nothing about Florida/do not trust me at all).

"the beverage get together"

Texas Tech at Oklahoma (4): Meh, let's just dedicate this time to think about Caitlin Clark.

Colorado at Oregon (7): Sure, whatever. Actually, no, read the candy thing.

Florida State at Clemson: This is so unfair to do, but it's Dabo, so lezdoit.

Also not really here for any Tajh Boyd slander, at all.

Minnesota at Northwestern: Puke. But go 'Cats.

Purdue at Nebraska: Thanks for that, Purdue. So we're clear, this is who you lost to:

Duke at Wake Forest (13): I see Wake scored 70 and gave up 56 last week, so I'm guessing that is why Z.W. Martin thinks I'd love them (he's right!). Back in on the Demon Deacs!

Ole Miss (10) at Auburn (18): Nah, no.

Penn State (20) at Ohio State (5): How is Penn State ranked? Has anybody watched anything?

/remembers they beat Wisconsin and Auburn

FINE.

North Carolina at Notre Dame (11): 

The Jag Bag
Wrapping It Up...

Me, if the combination of Neuqua, Michigan, or Iowa can scratch out two wins.

Bobby Loesch is a weekly contributor to Go Iowa Awesome. Follow him on Twitter @bobbystompy or email to bobbyloesch [at] gmail.com.

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