Out of the many storylines surrounding the first week and a half of college football season, one of the most unexpected was, of all things, weather.
It started when the USC Trojans hosted San Jose State in Week 0 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in front of a sparse crowd. The LA area was beset by an unusually hot and humid spell of weather, thanks to remnants of a tropical storm off the West Coast. Combined with a brutal noon start time that provided no shade or relief throughout the game, the conditions meant there weren’t many fans brave enough, or quite frankly dumb enough, to endure a heat index of roughly 105 degrees. For a game that was decided within minutes of kickoff.
That continued into Week 1, with teams like South Carolina and the Texas Longhorns hosting games during the middle of the afternoon sun in extreme heat. While more fans bought tickets, or even showed up to the stadium, many smartly left as soon as possible. Or in Texas’ case, huddled under the concourse in hopes of finding shade. Some had to be treated for medical conditions like heat exhaustion or dehydration.
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This has sparked debate over the wisdom of scheduling games in the middle of the afternoon, in August or early September, in hotter climates. Justifiably so.
But it also gave rise to one of the more ridiculous contentions you’ll ever see, and a near-perfect example of the decline of sportswriting as a profession and the reputation of the Los Angeles Times: blaming it on climate change. In response to a post describing and photographing a large group of Longhorns fans trying to escape the heat at DKR, LA Times assistant managing editor and sports editor Iliana Limon Romero said that programs should change scheduling to “adapt to climate change.”
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“At some point, schools and TV networks are going to have to adapt to climate change and stop expecting fans to tolerate extreme heat as a badge of honor supporting their teams,” she posted on X.
Oh boy.
Several things can be true at once. TV networks ignoring the reality of local conditions at noon or mid-afternoon in late summer in Texas or South Carolina because it fits their preferred broadcast window is a real concern. There’s no reason games in Austin in the first week of September should be played anytime other than at night. It’s also true that the symbolic “badge of honor” fans get from subjecting themselves to hell in order to watch 15 minutes of a non-competitive game is simply not worth the sacrifice. Particularly when it can lead to dangerous health conditions.
But to blame typical summer heat in Austin, Texas on climate change is absurd and ridiculous. Romero was quick to block anyone pointing that out to her, but the average high in Austin for this time of year is 95 to 97 degrees. It was a few degrees above that, but hardly out of the ordinary for that part of Texas in early September. Blaming climate change for it being hot in the summer in Texas is beyond ridiculous. And par for the course for modern sports editors and the LA Times.
The entire climate change industrial complex has been repeatedly proven wrong, as Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” inadvertently exposed. To Romero, though, it’s part of an encoded set of religious beliefs that take precedence due to their association with modern liberalism. There is no doubting or questioning of “The Science” in her world, therefore a hot day in Austin must be an example of climate change.
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Weather isn’t climate, you see, until it’s convenient.
Again, Texas shouldn’t be hosting a home game in the first week of September at two in the afternoon. That part’s true. Blaming normal weather on climate change is blatantly false. No matter how many people telling the truth she blocks.
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