David J. Phillip/Associated Press
The juxtaposition of Big 12, Southeastern and Atlantic Coast Conference leaders explaining why they were forging ahead with plans to play football this fall while speaking on one of the pandemic’s deadliest days in the United States since May was too much for Dr. Carlos del Rio, an executive associate dean at the Emory University School of Medicine.
“I mean, I feel like the Titanic,” del Rio said on Thursday, the day after those conferences said they would not abandon playing football and other sports in the fall, as the Big Ten and Pac-12 had done earlier in the week.