Caleb Farley, an NFL-bound cornerback from Virginia Tech, said this week that he lost his mother to breast cancer and couldn’t stomach the idea of losing another family member. Ra’Von Bonner, a reserve running back at the University of Illinois, told The Post the risks of playing outweighed the reward.
Players on the SEC call, who were part of a “student-athlete leadership council,” raised similar concerns, with one player asking: “For so much unknown in the air right now, is it worth having a football season without certainty?”…
The players were especially concerned with what happens once their universities reopen. When they returned for workouts this summer, their campuses were largely empty. Most of the people they interacted with were those inside their cloistered and regimented football programs, where regular testing and the potential ire of their powerful coaches made adherence to public health guidelines a must for many athletes.
