For heartbroken Mustangs fans, your anguish has come to an end as the NCAA Division II committee announced that Fall 2020 sports will be returning, albeit with a social distancing twist. Collegiate athletes will not be returning to the field or the court, instead they will be showing off their athletic prowess on the popular video-sharing website Zoom.

“I mean the kids are already doing this thing in their classrooms, and that’s gone on flawlessly, so the guys and I on the board decided, ‘Hell, why not do it with sports?'” Dr. Gary Outtoftouch, NCAA Division II board member, said. When asked if he even knew how the application worked, he added. “Of course, I know how the Zoomies work. You use your telecommunications device to do the thing, and then the other person does the other computer thing and then wham! Touchdown.”

Now from the comfort of their own homes, athletes will simply run, jump, hit, kick and set with the power of their voices. Instead of actually performing the action, the student-athlete will now just yell the action out. The Wichitan reached out to Buff McMann (No.69), linebacker and senior, to provide an easy-to-understand explanation of the new system.

“It’s really awesome! So like in football, the quarterback yells out ‘hit’ and then ‘hand off.’ Then the runningback yells ‘run’ and I immediately respond with ‘tackle for a loss of 50 yards,’ and next thing you know its 4th and 50 on their own goal-line. It’s incredible; I set the school tackle record in the first game,” McMann said.

For those who are worried the athletes aren’t getting the full student-athlete experience, the NCAA came up with a measure to make sure college kids are still getting the most important aspect of sports: the injuries. Every student-athlete is accompanied by a designated ‘Smacker’ who hits them with a large wooden stick periodically throughout the match. We reached out to an MSU soccer player who was among the first to test out this new system for comment.

“[Incomprehensible muttering and shouting],” Sabrina Con Cushion (No.14), goalkeeper and sports injury sophomore, said.

One of the chief critiques about the new system is that the NCAA cares more about the profits brought in by collegiate sporting events and not the safety of the players or the quality of play.

“This is simply not true,” Dr. E. Litist, NCAA Division II chairman, said, while counting stacks of hundred dollar bills in his office. “All we care about is making sure students don’t miss out on the college athletics experience. Which of course is why we mandated each university to use their tuition revenue to purchase a 100 by 100-foot screen to showcase the Zoom games for students at their stadiums, for a small fee of course.”

While some critics have questioned how contact sports could possibly be played on a platform that prevents any sort of physical interaction, their voices were drowned out by the thousands of men in their late 40’s chanting, “Sports! Sports! Sports!” Among these voices was the 48th president of the United States of America and known collegiate sports advocate, President Donald J. Trump.

“I think this is the single greatest idea in the history of ideas. This idea makes all the other ideas look terrible,” Trump said. “What our nation needs now more than anything else in the world-is Division II collegiate football…and those other sports too I guess. As long as of course, there isn’t any sort of political commentary.”