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Post being replied to

Perspective by dialadown

First, it is my respectful opinion that you should never have "zero doubt" about anything. You should always have some fear that you are wrong and be testing your opinions and hypotheses.

As a parent of a D1 athlete who is currently on-campus training for a fall season, I can assure you that adults are heavily involved on the athlete side. As parents, we've analyzed this, we've talked it out as a family and with coaches (who applied zero pressure) and fellow parents of teammates. We understand the protocols, the risks, etc.. While I won't say I have zero doubt that we've thought about this more than you have since I don't know you, I can tell you that an adult decision is being made carefully on my kid's participation. If you want to get into the nuts and bolts about why, let's go offline and we can talk all day about the many deceiving definitions of "cases", death rate trends, causation and correlation, the vectors that spur on a snowballing effect, school protocols, etc...we've looked at all the data and opinions ad-nauseam. To indicate that these kids are making their own decisions is a faulty assumption.

In my view, these institutional decisions have very little to do with the athlete interest or the current state of the health situation. They are mostly about the liability/threat of litigation exposure and institutional reputation in the face of an intensely political environment. Those factors don't always align with the athlete's best interests and that is why you see them speaking out.