It's looking like the football season isn't going to happen because of safety. But is that the real reason?

This broke my heart since college football is the sport I love the most especially since my childhood favorite team, Nebraska, is in the Big 10 and many of the others in there are some of my favorites too (even though I am supposed to not like them since they are direct competition.)

I really don't think that it is about the sport, or even about protecting the players from Covid. I think that this choice by the Big 10 to cancel the entire upcoming football season is about what basically everything in the world eventually boils down to: Money.

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The Big 10 kind of shocked the world of football by announcing a few days ago that they will not be opening any of the schools' football seasons. This is not small deal since the Big 10 contains some of the biggest teams that are heavily watched and have massive stadiums and alumni networks. Nebraska, Michigan State, Maryland, Michigan U, Wisconsin, and Ohio State (who has the largest football stadium in the world) are all part of the Big 10. Their presence on the football field will be missed as well because many of these teams go to bowl games every year. Certain has-been teams like University of Nebraska was basically a dynasty in the 80's although they have slipped badly in recent years.

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The Big 10 would like to have us believe that this is about the protection of the various teams but I am apprehensive to believe that because these same teams did, in fact, have players return to practice quite some time ago. I think I know what the real reason is.

You see, in order for the season to open this year there would be a whole mess of things that the teams would have to go through in order to make that happen. This would include testing, enforcing of distancing, introduction of CDC overseers (or something like that) constant sterilization of equipment and facilities as well as strict controls on transport and controls on the teams that any team is playing against. Basically it would include hundreds of pages of new regulations and it would be expensive.

So we can still make this happen, right? College football generates huge amounts of money and it should easily cover it with advertising like it always does? It probably would, at least for all the schools in the Big 10, but here is the thing: Football isn't the only sport that these colleges participate in and you could be guaranteed that there would be some sort of whining lacrosse or badminton team, that no one has ever watched play that wasn't related to them, that would demand the exact same and expensive treatment in order for their sports to move forward.

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If colleges were honest, every single college would have a men's basketball and a men's football team. They would not have any other sports at all because these are the only 2 that generate any sort of meaningful revenue and we all know it. There are scores of other sports that colleges have on the rosters including things that you wouldn't even think of like table tennis and archery. Most of these students are on scholarships as well and have competitions that for the most part, aren't even televised and no one even knows they are happening.

If the Big 10 were to provide the list of things necessary for football to open "safely with Covid existing" they would be required by the ACLU or some other legal organization to provide it for the women's water polo team and the men's chess team also. Costs would spiral out of control and while the football and basketball seasons are normally able to cover all of the costs of these other sports programs, once you introduce anti-covid type regulations, the Universities would be hemorrhaging money.

Of course no one is actually saying this is the case and they will claim that it is all about safety and what not even though physically fit people in their late teens and early 20's have an almost infinitesimally small chance of getting very sick from Covid or even knowing they have it at all.

It remains to be seen if the other conferences are going to follow suit but I would imagine that there is a very good chance it will end up being the case across the board. Watch the press releases as the rich board of directors for these various sports get in front of the cameras and pretend to actually care about the well being of other people.

It's about money in the end or in this case, the unwillingness to shell out what is necessary in a convoluted program that guarantees equal treatment to sports that people actually want to watch and sports that people probably didn't even know their university participates in.