You can't say #BlackLivesMatter and play college football this year

Slate's Joel Anderson offers up some chilling statistics:

This week, players returned to campuses all around the country preparing themselves for a season that almost certainly shouldn’t be played. Just look at the early numbers. Two weeks ago at Oklahoma State, three players tested positive for the virus. Last week, the University of Houston suspended workouts after six players tested positive. And Thursday at the University of Texas, news reports emerged that 13 players tested positive — an uptick from the six reported the day before.

I've long predicted that American sports leagues probably will try to resume playing soon, but that somebody will get sick, and everybody will shut down for the rest of the year. But it's ironic that efforts to resume sports are happening at the same time as the "Black Lives Matter" protests -- which started out as a policing issue, but have spread to hard discussions about racism and the exploitation of Black people in all sectors of society.

College sports should be one of those sectors. In the major sports, black and other minority athletes provide disproportionate share of the labor with relatively little compensation, considering the money they're generating for their schools. It's already an exploitative system. But now there's a chance that exploitation will lead to illness and, possibly, death. The excuse that young, healthy people don't face as much danger from the coronavirus, but the truth is there's still a lot we don't know -- and we're learning all the time that asymptomatic carriers of the virus might also face long-term health problems.

The coaches and other university officials need to stop this, now, or their words of racial harmony will ring especially hollow. You can't say that "black lives matter" and keep playing the games. Not this year.