Football Inc.

Look, I wouldn't know Northwestern president Morton Schapiro if he faceguarded me on a go route. So it's possible he believed in his heart of hearts what he said yesterday. It's possible they all did.

What Schapiro said was, it wasn't public pressure or the threat of lawsuits or, God forbid, FILTHY LUCRE that convinced the Big Ten to give in and decide to play a half-assed season of football after all. It was because stringent guidelines had been hammered out that would KEEP OUR STUDENT-ATHLETES SAFE, which after all was their HIGHEST PRIORITY.

Maybe he did believe all that. It's possible I could believe it, too, so long as I could also believe there's a giant invisible bird over Montana that makes the wind blow.

In other words: Nah.

This is not about Keeping Our Student-Athletes safe or Enhanced Testing or any of that other noise. This is about Football Inc., and its insatiable appetite. It's about getting the cash cow milking again, about bidness and the prerogatives of bidness.

And so, like the ACC and the SEC, they'll play football in the middle of a pandemic. Every precaution will be taken. Daily antigen testing will be conducted on players and coaches. The workforce will be protected to the fullest extent possible, and after that the Bastard Plague will sort 'em out.

Think that sounds a tad cynical?

Ask yourself, then, how many actual students on the 14 campuses of the Big Ten will be getting daily antigen tests on their universities' dime.

I'll take "What is 'none'?" for a thousand, Alex.

Actual students -- your garden variety grade-point grunts -- don't fuel a multi-billion dollar industry, after all. They don't go out there on Saturday afternoons in the fall wearing the logos of the apparel companies with whom their schools have juicy deals. They don't provide ABC or Fox or ESPN or whomever with lucrative content.

And so, the Big Ten will have football beginning the weekend of October 23-24. That this decision comes days after they all sat home and watched the SEC and ACC and Big 12 play last Saturday afternoon and evening is just an amazing coincidence.

Listen. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad the Big Ten is going to play football. I'm ecstatic it's going to play football. And that's because there are few things on this planet I love more than college football on a Saturday afternoon in the fall.

However.

However, as the Blob has noted before, half of what makes college football special is the social ramble: Cornhole and foodie spreads in the parking lot at Notre Dame, cocktail parties in The Grove at Ole Miss, the unearthly roar of the faithful during a night game at LSU. Without that, it's just the bidness of bidness.

And that's all we'll get from the Big Ten, which has decided the games will be played in empty stadiums. The show will go on, but without the show. And the reality presidents and ADs and publicists continually deny -- that college football is as transactional as a corporate merger -- will be right there with its face hanging out.

It will be a final tacit admission these are not humble college students crackin' books and playin' for the glory of Whatsamatta U.after all, but unpaid employees. And that will have its repercussions down the road, I'm thinking.

In the meantime ... enjoy the games.

Just be aware of what you're watching.