Bob Schwartz

The structure of the gua is Mountain above, Earth below. It symbolizes the falling away (landslide) of a mountain. The nature of a mountain is to stand high above the Earth. Here it lies on the ground, having fallen.

The question of whether there will be college football this fall is something being written and talked about daily.

For those who don’t keep up, there were high hopes and brave plans this spring. Then team workouts began in June, with a small number of players testing positive, and some workouts cancelled. Then the Ivy League conference announced that fall athletics were cancelled, a development dismissed by some because the rich Ivies didn’t need the football money anyway (and, unspoken, it was just one more example of effete East Coast intellectuals out of touch with real America). Then the Patriot League, which includes Army and Navy, announced cancellation of fall football, but gave Army and Navy a pass on the decision, saying they had special circumstances (that is, they play for owner Donald Trump). Then the PAC-12 and Big Ten, two of the Power Five conferences, announced they were shrinking their schedule to conference-only games, a half-way measure that allowed them to start playing a few weeks later than planned, hoping that by mid-September things would be magically better. And the same day of the PAC-12 announcement, the PAC-12 commissioner disclosed that he had tested positive for COVID-19.

It is my humble view, and the growing view of many more expert than me, that there will not be college football this fall. As regular readers know, in times of uncertainty, I turn to a trusted insight tool used for thousands of years: the I Ching, the Book of Change.

This is what the I Ching had to say about college football this fall.

From the Complete I Ching by Taoist Master Alfred Huang

Hexagram 23
Bo • Falling Away

NAME AND STRUCTURE

Wilhelm translates Bo as Splitting Apart, and Blofeld translates it as Peeling off. Here I adopt Falling Away. In Chinese, when the character is pronounced bao, it means shelling or peeling—for instance, shelling peas or peeling bananas. When it is pronounced bo, it means decaying, corroding, or falling away. Applied to a mountain, it signifies a landslide.

The structure of the gua is Mountain above, Earth below. It symbolizes the falling away (landslide) of a mountain. The nature of a mountain is to stand high above the Earth. Here it lies on the ground, having fallen.

DECISION

Falling Away.
Unfavorable to have somewhere to go.

COMMENTARY ON THE DECISION

Falling Away is decaying.
The yielding want to change the firm.
Unfavorable to have somewhere to go
Little fellows are growing and extending.
Act in accordance with the situation and keep still.

SIGNIFICANCE

This gua displays the principle of the waxing and waning of yin and yang. While the influence of the yin grows, that of the yang declines. When evil runs rampant, it is sure to affect what is good and correct. In the course of history many great empires have decayed and fallen away.