July 1, 2020

Why Are We Playing Football in the Middle of a Pandemic?

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What do you do if you’re a star high school quarterback in Southern California but you’re afraid the upcoming season might be canceled? By God, you find some state that’s going to play football no matter what:

Newhall Hart quarterback Titus Tucker has decided to move to Alabama to play his senior season over concerns the 2020 football season in California will be delayed or canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

….The family apparently believes he needs to play this fall to help attract interest from colleges. “He’s worried he’s not going to get any film for colleges, so he wants to play in the fall,” [coach Rick Herrington] said. “They have family friends in Alabama. I’m sure it’s going to happen in other places if [players] find places are playing.”

I get it. But getting it doesn’t change the fact that this is insane. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic. It’s killing hundreds of thousands of people and there’s probably no sport more likely to spread the virus than football. So just stop playing. Everywhere. The country will survive without high school football for one season.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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