Why Pritzker Changed His Mind On Sports
With political end game in sight, the governor gives in and grants return to play
In a virtual press conference held on Jan. 15, Gov. Pritzker was asked a general question about the return of youth sports. When he spoke on that Friday, all sports were on lockdown.
Here is what he said:
The choices that we've had to make, that I've had to make have been between bad and worse...even through a young person may survive the pandemic much better than an older person, a young person can carry the disease to older people.
We want to be careful and avoid more community spread...it’s a good beginning. I'd like to see the numbers continue falling, regions meeting the metrics and more open play of sports...it’s up to everybody in the state to follow the mitigations.
Right now, vaccinations are not going to squash the challenge that we have with COVID-19...it will gradually overtake the numbers. But right now they are not.
Pritzker’s autonomy (the Illinois Department of Public Health is filled with his appointees and are essentially his proxy) with return to play underscored those comments with a ruinous sense of finality.
Is he actually still justifying not playing sports because he thinks Jonny or Jenny will transmit the virus to Papa and Nana? He’s still tying ‘metrics’ with the ‘open play of sports?’ How is that possible?
It was possible then and for the previous months because Pritzker had Absolute Rule. And an end game in mind.
Since July of last year, he used used anecdote-driven, fear-based language to buy time. Now that time has come.
This past Friday morning, Jan. 22, the Illinois High School Association was called into a virtual meeting with Pritzker’s representatives.
That Pritzker initiated the meeting was newsworthy. For months, the governor and the IDPH rebuffed numerous attempts by the IHSA to discuss return to play and share updated data related to Covid.
“It’s the IDPH,” I was told repeatedly by athletic directors and coaches. “They won’t engage.”
As recent as last week, on conference calls with AD’s, IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson painted a grim picture when asked about the future of football and basketball.
When asked questions about the calculus used by the IDPH to determine risk classifications, Anderson could only say, “We don’t know.”
The risk-labeling proved to be the biggest hinderance to football, basketball and wrestling returning. Under guidelines dating back to July of 2020, high-risk sports could not participate in any type of competition beyond public health permissible ‘contact days.’
But with no data or instructions on adjustments to levels of play, and no dialogue on between decision-makers whatsoever, what could be done? Other states managed to have successful seasons mitigating public health protocols. Why not Illinois?
Pritzker’s vague indifference to youth sports, his continuous spouting of generalities when asked, peaked at his Jan. 15 press conference. Other than sports classified as low-risk, that left little hope for other seasons to be played.
That all changed last Friday.
Without warning, representatives from Pritzker’s office told the IHSA the morning of Jan. 22 about the return to play revision.
Later, Pritzker and Dr. Ezike took the podium, with Ezike opening the door for sports to return. The classifications remain the same—football and basketball are high risk—but the activities allowable under regional tiers were altered. Basketball and football, on life support for months, now have a clear path forward.
Here are comments from Ezike at the Jan. 22 press conference:
Since the pandemic began, I have received countless emails and phone calls from players, parents, coaches and many others about youth sports. There have been organized protests about this issue. I hear, I see, and I feel the passion around youth sports. I take very seriously the value that recreational outlets offer the physical and the mental health of our children
From Pritzker:
The issue here is very much our children here are carrying it home to their parents, their grandparents after interacting very closely sometimes without a lot of padding when interacting with one another. Things have changed as a result of the work people have done across the state following the mitigations, so there are many more people playing sports today versus yesterday
(Yes…Pritzker is still worried about Nana and Papa).
So what changed? Why the turnaround?
Ezike’s comments were revealing in their humanity, above all else.
The fact that she acknowledged the ‘mental health’ of children. Because that part has been primarily ignored by Pritzker and public health officials.
I’d like to believe that the #HearOurVoicesIllinois viral campaign had some impact. How, in the week leading up to Friday’s return to play news, the calls to state and national lawmakers, and their public endorsement of return to play, got on the radar of the IDPH.
I’d like to believe the collective voices of so many in the state (and out), speaking their truths, eventually wore down those in charge and moved them towards opening up competition.
I’m not cynical enough to say it had no effect. But I’m realistic to know what probably mattered most.
That’s January 20.
That’s the day Joseph Biden became our 46th President. And Pritzker was comfortable enough in believing he would be getting what he’s wanted all along.
And that’s money and power.
At the January 15 press conference, a virtual solo engagement by Pritzker, he had this to say about a proposed stimulus bill from then President-Elect Biden:
(On Jan. 14) President-elect Biden put out a serious and deliberate plan to accelerate bringing an end to this pandemic. I've had numerous conversations with the incoming administration to share the challenges the states have faced and what role the federal government must play in our recovery. So, too, have Republican governors ... I have every reason to be optimistic for the future of Illinois and the nation. I urge Congress to take up the Biden plan immediately.
In December 2020, Pritzker said he would have to make $700 million in personnel and service cuts to help bridge a $4 billion state budget deficit. When asked at the same Jan. 15 press conference if a stimulus bill would avoid making cuts, he said this:
The loss of revenues as a result of COVID-19 is the biggest challenge in the 20-21 budget. When you look at what President-Elect Biden has proposed, it would support, not just Illinois states across the nation in their filling the hole that was left by the loss of revenues from COVID-19. It will be helpful to our budget in the fiscal year 2021.
Prtizker is pretty clear on the record of his desire for federal money to relieve Illinois of its debts.
Use of federal money to bail out states has come with criticism.
Ted Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative think tank and advocacy group, had this to say:
Bailouts for state and local governments for decades of reckless spending by irresponsible politicians have no place in a COVID relief bill and they should be rejected. Instead, we must prioritize stopping the virus and getting people back to work as quickly and safely as possible to save the lives and livelihoods of as many people as we can.
U.S. congressman Darin LaHood, who’s district is in the state capitol of Springfield, filed legislation last September to require states to reach a threshold of fiscal health before receiving any federal funds. Under this legislation (that has not passed) Illinois would not be eligible for funds.
No surprise that LaHood was one congressman who spoke out publicly last week in favor of return to play:
I wrote this in a newsletter article a few days before the presidential election about what a Biden win could mean for return to play in Illinois:
If Biden, the Democrat, wins, the result loosens Pritzker’s incentive for penal actions. The adversary—Trump—is gone. The urgency to spout doomsday virus scenarios, while not altogether unfastened, would erode somewhat. With a Democrat in the White House, support for his long game prize—a federal bailout—is strengthened, certainly if the Democrats take over the Senate.
So when contemplating why Pritzker had his about face Friday, follow the political bread crumbs. They leave a trail all the way from Chicago to Springfield.
(It’s not a coincidence Pritzker had Ezike make the actual announcement about sports last Friday. Leave it to the ‘experts’, right? It was all cosmetic theater, all political grandstanding).
Pritzker has been talking since Biden won the election about the ‘great’ conversations he’s having with the newly elected administration.
Don’t be surprised if one of those conversations includes a job for him in 2022 after mid-term elections and the year Illinois residents head to the polls again.
Wouldn’t that just be like Pritzker to bail after his bailout?
I wrote in my first article for this newsletter that sports in this state had nothing to do with the virus. The whole exercise has been a farce, with Pritzker rolling his wiggly-jiggly bailout slinky down a metaphorical Monopoly staircase, waiting for it to land on the right Boardwalk square, the one that reads US Treasury.
After the events from Friday, it’s hard to argue otherwise.
It’s shameful. Just as shameful that one man held that much influence over the most basic of freedoms—kids playing sports.
And it’s not over. The infrastructure remains in place. Until football kicks off and basketball tips, anything can happen. Look at what’s happening in Michigan this week. Continued diligence is needed.
The upcoming seasons are likely to be messy, with starts and stops and mitigations to be met.
But once the seasons start, the competitors—the athletes, the coaches, the family members, the fans—will have won. When toe meets leather sometime later this winter or spring, will anyone really care about Pritzker’s motivations for locking everybody out?
No, because after months and months of political see-sawing, it’s the games that are to be celebrated.