Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins already has a catchphrase from his time in Washington, but he might have created a new one this week.
“If I die, I die.”
Cousins spreads virus misinformation
In podcast interview with NFL Network host Kyle Brandt published Wednesday morning on Spotify, Cousins said he would accept his fate if he contracted the coronavirus.
“If I get it, I’m gonna ride it out. I’m gonna let nature do its course,” he said. “Survival-of-the-fittest kind of approach. And just say, if it knocks me out, it knocks me out. I’m going to be OK. You know, even if I die. If I die, I die. I kind of have peace about that.”
Cousins said he wears a mask out of respect for others, but he does not believe face masks slow the virus’ spread, and he said players cannot breathe through them during workouts.
Brandt asked Cousins where he sat on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being someone who believes masks are stupid and 10 being “the person who says, ‘Masks are stupid, you’re all a bunch of lemmings,’ and 10 is, ‘I’m not leaving my master bathroom for the next 10 years.’”
Cousins classified himself as “.000001” on that scale, but said he did not want to call anyone stupid.
The Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization recommend the use of face masks in tandem with frequent hand washing and social distancing to prevent contracting and spreading the virus.
Trump pressures Big Ten to play football
Big Ten President Kevin Warren and United States President Donald Trump spoke earlier this week about the possibility of the conference reversing course to play football at some point this fall.
“We had a very good conversation, very productive, and maybe we’ll be very nicely surprised,” Trump said Tuesday. “They had it closed up, and I think they’d like to see it open, along with a lot of other football that’s being played right now.”
But Big Ten officials reached by both ESPN and Yahoo cast doubt on the possibility that a call from the White House would press the conference into action, particularly with no significant advancement in testing and prevention available to teams. Yahoo’s Pete Thamel reported that multiple sources laughed at the prospect.
“Nothing has changed,” a Big Ten source told ESPN. “Nothing. We have to get all the medical questions answered before we can even bring back a plan to the (university) presidents for approval.”
Meanwhile, the Pac-12, which pushed back its football season the same day the Big Ten did, has not been in communication with the White House, according to our own Jon Wilner.
The Big Ten includes schools from swing states Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all of which Trump won in 2016. The only plausible swing state in the Pac-12’s footprint is Arizona, with Colorado as a significant stretch for Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
