As in many states, college football is religion in Ohio. As The New York Times points out, the Ohio State Buckeyes franchise outshines all the state's pro teams in terms of both stature and success, so the cancellation of the Big Ten football season is a gut punch for a state that Donald Trump won by 9 points in 2016.
In fact, the Big Ten conference disruption will be felt in several of 2020's most important battleground states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, as Wolverine, Nittany Lion, and Badger fans all lament what could have been.
But Ohio remains unique for several reasons. While the polling in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin has generally trended toward Joe Biden to varying degrees, the contest in Ohio has been tightening considerably, with some recent polls giving Biden a slight edge. Another difference comes down to the state's leadership. While the other three states are currently led by Democrats, Ohio's GOP Gov. Mike DeWine has proven to be one of the few Republican governors who took the pandemic seriously from the start. DeWine's more science-based approach with early closures and social distancing was the polar opposite of Trump's, and he know enjoys sky-high approvals among Republicans and Democrats alike, including 76% and 81% respectively in a Quinnipiac poll released in late June. The same poll put Trump's overall approvals in the state at 44%.
Whether Trump will suffer a political blow in the state remains to be seen. A late July tracking poll from CBS News/YouGov showed Trump's standing on the coronavirus in particular tracked very closely to his approvals in the Q poll, with 44% saying Trump had done a very/somewhat good job and 56% saying Trump's response was somewhat/very bad. But there was a big disparity in the "very" category, with just 19% saying Trump’s coronavirus handling was "very good” while fully 43% said it was “very bad.”
What was perhaps more interesting was the survey's inquiry about what impact the coronavirus has had on the state’s economy.
- Little or no impact: 4%
- A temporary downturn: 46%
- A Recession: 37%
- A Depression: 12%
The two numbers that jump out are the fact that just 4% of respondents said it had no impact and 46% thought the coronavirus' economic downturn would be "temporary." That was in late July. But as the state enters the fall with school closures and a lost college football season, voters might start rethinking the meaning of temporary.
That's where the Times piece has some interesting insights, starting with Dennis Kuchta, who was loading groceries into his pickup from the Dollar General store in Center of the World, a small community in northeastern Ohio.
“The bars here will all take a real hit when there aren’t games on Saturdays,” the 69-year-old retiree told the Times. “It’s a huge loss, and I don’t think people realize that yet,” he noted, adding, "“Trump just blew it."
Paul Finebaum, who hosts a nationally syndicated college football radio show on ESPN, says his efforts to keep politics off his airwaves have fallen flat this year. "This summer I’ve failed miserably,” Finebaum said. “We don’t have a day that doesn’t pass where someone doesn’t call up and blame the president. Even from the South, I’ve heard more anger directed at the president than I thought.”
For now, the SEC, ACC, and Big 12 conferences plan to continue play as usual, while the PAC-12 conference has joined the Big Ten in cancelling play. But no football team will emerge from the season with bragging rights since some of the nation's biggest teams won't be setting foot on the field.
While Democrats and Republicans differed in their outlooks on whether Trump would be held responsible by Ohio voters, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who holds two master's degrees from Ohio State and knows the state quite well, thinks Trump will be on the hook for the Buckeye's lost season.
“Everything that happens in this pandemic is on his watch,” Brown told the Times Tuesday. “The unemployment’s on his watch, the canceled seasons are on his watch. I mean, all of this is on Trump’s watch, and he has so bungled this and he could point fingers and blame some elite somebody somewhere, but it’s on him.”
That's not a surprising take from a Democratic senator, but it's also not a bad bet.