College Spotlight

Referring to the college spotlight, the college football season has just come to an end with the Championship Game between Alabama and Ohio State. Heading into the season, everybody was unsure if there would be a season! The coronavirus would cause games to be postponed, teams to move schedules around , schools to realign their budgets, and conferences were forced to debate on how to move forward with the new reality that college ball might not be a thing . But that did not stop Bama they took on this season as if it was another, with the drive to win it all. The Pac-12 Conference and the Big Ten Conference would cancel their seasons and would later reverse course more towards a safer route. . As the environment constantly shifted, there was one remaining constant as the dust settled: The Alabama Crimson Tide would sit at the top of college football’s mountain for the 18th time in school history and for the 6th time in the last 12 years. Alabama beat the Ohio State Buckeyes 52-24 in the 2021 College Football Playoff National Championship Game at Hard Rock Stadium. But more into the spotlight of a fellow Alabama player is Devonta Smith. After the biggest moment of his football career so far, DeVonta Smith took the time to share a message to the youth. And that's because the Alabama senior wide receiver, who is listed at 6'1" and 175 pounds, had just proved any doubters wrong by winning the Heisman Trophy. "To all the young kids out there that's not the biggest, not the strongest, just keep pushing, because I'm not the biggest," he said during his acceptance speech ( ESPN's Alex Scarborough). "I've been doubted a lot just because of my size. Really, it just comes down to you put your mind to it, you can do it. No job is too big." This one man did the impossible, no one would have thought he was built for college ball but he said otherwise. But we cannot skip past the cancellation of sports in many states across the United States. California has just recently cancelled all sports until further notice. But colleges are trying their best to scrape up a sports season for their students. Soccer drills in socially distanced quadrants. Masked volleyball players in gyms. Padlocked fields. Positive tests. Zoom team meetings. Canceled. Postponed. Competing. Since March, college sports on every level have been fundamentally disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic and mentally beaten at the thought that their college sport might not even be thought of this year. Some fall sports are competing, but that varies by region, by community, by politics, by division, by conference and even by team. College football, that billion-dollar machine, picked up momentum when the Big Ten reversed course to play a fall season, despite multiple outbreaks of Covid-19 and cries of outrage that unpaid athletes were risking their lives. But this still doesn't explain why high schools cannot do the same. We all as a country can take the precautions needed if it came down to us catching the virus.