A fine mess

So, now the Big Ten's plan (to use a term with which it is only nominally familiar) is to start the football season sometime around Thanksgiving. I guess.

And meanwhile the SEC us starting its season Sept. 26.

And the ACC is starting its season Sept. 10, and the Big 12 is starting Sept. 26.

And all of that is contingent on whether or not a whole pile of college kids act like adults and not college kids, which early returns indicate hovers somewhere between Not Bloody Likely and Yeah, Right.

So we'll see. Maybe the Big Ten starts Thanksgiving weekend, and maybe it won't. Maybe the SEC, ACC and Big 12 get through October without half their rosters being in quarantine, and maybe they won't. And who the heck knows how the College Football Playoff works out, if there is one.

How do you include the Big Ten, two months behind everyone else? So that leaves, um, Clemson and Alabama and maybe Georgia and Oklahoma vying for the "national championship."

What a great larruping mess this all is.

You'd think, having had months to think about it, the pashas of the Power 5 conferences could have gotten together and hammered out a coordinated plan. But, nah. The Bastard Plague came and hung around and got worse and worse because Americans are, well, idiots, and it apparently never occurred to the pashas that maybe they ought to get on the same page to deal with it.

But again, nah. The only plan in place was, essentially, "You be you." So the Big Ten and the Pac-12 went one way and the rest of 'em went another and here we are.

It is my considered opinion that the Big Ten and the Pac-12 went the right way in delaying -- not canceling, just delaying -- their seasons. Playing football in the middle of a pandemic did not seem wise to them. I don't think this is a Chicken Little position, as Our Only Available Impeached President and the We Want Football And We Want It Now crowd seem to. I think it's simple common sense.

But, hey. As someone who loves college football about as much as breathing air, I get it. Back when some off-brand cable network used to air an Ivy League game of the week late on Saturday mornings, I used to watch it. Yale-Cornell or Dartmouth-Penn or Harvard-Princeton were just as enjoyable to me as Texas-Oklahoma or Michigan-Ohio State or USC-Notre Dame -- and maybe more so, considering there were actual college students playing in the former and not, as in the latter, university employees.

Last night there was a college football game played, the first of the season. Sure, it was only an FCS game between Austin Peay and Central Arkansas, but it was glorious. Central Arkansas won 24-17 on a touchdown pass with 34 seconds to play, and, damn, weren't we starved for this?

And, damn, don't you wish we weren't in the middle of a pandemic?

But we are.

And so maybe there's a lot more of last night, and maybe there won't be.

That's not the-sky-is-falling hysteria or panic porn. That's just reality.