Down south, the Southeastern Conference is life, and the way everyone reacted this past weekend, you’d think it’s life and death. I am talking about our community’s reaction to the postponement and possible cancellation of the football game between LSU and the University of Florida.
With Hurricane Matthew slowly barrelling toward the east coast of the United States, many colleges had to move their football games. Of the 11 football games affected by the hurricane, the LSU versus UF game is the only one that does not have a scheduled makeup game.
We all watched a PR disaster unfold in front of us as a gametime decision quickly turned into a he-said-she-said between an athletic director, the media and the SEC until the postponement was official. As a diehard LSU fan, I dove into the numbers to see how an unprecedented SEC cancellation would affect our season.
To spare you the nitty gritty details, a cancellation could have serious effects on the SEC championship if LSU or UF happen to win the rest of their SEC games. However, as LSU fans kept discussing these numbers, my attention turned to another number — 19.
This is the reported number of Americans who died from Hurricane Matthew at the time of publication.
The hurricane meant more to me than most people in Louisiana. My hometown, an island on the coast of Georgia not far from Jacksonville, was under a mandatory evacuation before the LSU game was even postponed, and my family has yet to return to their home.
While most people were concerned with the football game, I was concerned for my family and hometown. I was not prepared to go through another tragedy like I did just a few months ago with the Louisiana flooding. Listening to my mom tell me she was moving our family photos to our second story brought flashbacks of the devastation I saw here in Baton Rouge.
I’m lucky enough to have called Baton Rouge my home for the past five years, which is why I poured my blood, sweat and tears into helping rebuild this community. But while I was preparing to sit helpless 700 miles away while my family dealt with destruction, I had to listen to friends and social media talk about the inconvenience of having one less football game. That hurt.
Luckily, Hurricane Matthew let out to sea more than predicted, lessening the devastation. This meant that during the original game time, Gainesville, which is as far from Jacksonville as Baton Rouge is from New Orleans, was sunny and dry.
But the destruction of the Louisiana flooding and Hurricane Matthew are similar.
The death toll of the Louisiana flooding was 13, while Hurricane Matthew’s U.S. death toll is at 19. The Louisiana flooding has caused economic damage estimated between $8-10 billion while Hurricane Matthew’s early estimated damage is between $4-6 billion. This isn’t even taking into account the over 800 people killed in Haiti.
Was Gainesville affected as much a Baton Rouge? No, but it’s still not fair to expect a program with players whose families are in the affected areas to be concerned with a game over the wellbeing of loved ones. I would hope and expect that if the Louisiana flooding occurred during football season, we would allow our players to look after their loved ones despite our schedule.
Could the situation have been handled better by the UF athletic department and the SEC? Absolutely. In fact, LSU was more than generous with its reported offers of funding transportation and boarding for the Florida squad to come play at Tiger Stadium. However, this gesture seemed to be more about playing a game than accommodating fellow competitors in their time of need, made evident by Gov. John Bel Edwards’ statements about how rescheduling the game could be a $6 million hit to LSU and we should not be penalized because of the hurricane.
I understand the significance of LSU football to the entire state of Louisiana. However, I’m still disappointed that the same people who complained about the lack of national coverage of our disaster are belittling the disasters of others.
Baton Rouge has been through the most trying year a community can go through. But that gives us no right to decide who is going through a disaster and who is just “hiding” from playing the LSU Tigers. I expected more empathy out of our community.
Jay Cranford is a 22-year-old finance senior from St. Simons Island, Georgia.