Joy, with a side of qualm

 The Blob loves him some college football. You know that because I keep repeating it until you want to scream.

And so of course I'm loving this first big weekend, because there were fans and bands and defensive stands (See: Georgia 10, Clemson 3). There was a quarterback who nearly had his leg amputated three years ago (McKenzie Milton) bringing back Florida State from 18 points down in the fourth quarter against Notre Dame.

There was Jack Coan (26-of-35, 366 yards and four touchdowns in his first start) and Michael Mayer (9 catches for 120 yards and a score) doing the sons of Notre Dame proud, and Milton and Jordan Travis and Jashaun Corbin doing the late Bobby Bowden proud for Florida State, dadgum it.

There was Northern Illinois, coached by Bishop Luers grad Thomas Hammock, knocking off Georgia Tech. There was UCLA looking strong in knocking off LSU, and Virginia Tech looking strong in knocking off North Carolina. There was Penn State going up to Madison and knocking off Wisconsin.

Shoot. There was even a graduate assistant (Zeb Noland) improbably winding up the starting quarterback for South Carolina against Eastern Illinois, and throwing four touchdown passes in the first half of a 46-0 rout.

It was wondrous. It was joyous. It felt like college football was back, as the teevees kept saying ad nauseum all weekend.

Except.

Except, if you're a thinking human at all, you couldn't help feeling a little queasy at the same time you were feeling thrilled, seeing all those stadiums packed cheek-by-jowl with fans.

Look. College football is nothing without the fans. We all know this. The fans make the game more than they make any other game, and nothing reiterated that more than what we saw this weekend

But as a few timid voices pointed out, how many superspreader Bastard Plague events did we also see this weekend?

Because, listen, the Plague isn't going away. In fact, it's killing people in droves and overwhelming medical services again, thanks to the remorseless delta variant and the heedless lunacy of the anti-vaxxer, anti-masker crowd.

We can pretend, in other words, that everything is normal again because we're mostly just sick of it not being normal. But nothing is remotely normal.

Seeing packed stadiums again was great, thrilling, abundantly joyful. But with the joy came a side of qualm. With the joy, at least some of us paused briefly to think, "Um, is this wise? Did I miss the memo about the Plague being over, because it sure doesn't sound like it's over?"

Yeah. I know. Total Danny Downer stuff.

But tell me you didn't think the same thing, at least fleetingly, while you were watching all that joy. Tell me you didn't.