Politico: “The college football season is crumbling — leaving another void in the American cultural landscape that MAGA world is blaming on the Trump-hating left. President Donald Trump latched on to the issue in recent days as two major college conferences postponed their football seasons. He tweeted about it on Monday — ‘Play College Football!’ — and called into a sports radio show on Tuesday to insist, inaccurately, that college athletes were unlikely to be harmed in the long term. Then, as often happens when the president prioritizes an issue, a cadre of conservative pundits and congressional allies lined up behind him to make the case.”

“Some arguments are cultural: A crucial, romantic part of American identity can’t disappear; college athletes deserve to play because of the work they’ve put in; the rigors of college sports are a safer setting than normal college life. But the undercurrent is also political: Don’t let the left win. ‘The Left doesn’t care — they think removing joy from the fall will hurt Trump, so they’ll push to shut down football,’ Fox News host Laura Ingraham tweeted Tuesday night. ‘It’s all political.’ Not mentioned: the rising coronavirus caseloads in numerous college football hotbeds. The result is yet another front in Trump’s 2020 culture wars. He has previously tried to use college football as a political platform, attending games in Trump-friendly locations. And now he’s banking that the issue will work in his favor heading into a tough reelection fight, perhaps eyeing the fact that many crucial swing states — Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania to name a few — are also big football states.”