Keeler column: Good move by the grown-ups in making this difficult decision

Feels like a wake, doesn’t it? A toast to the grownups in the room, most of whom could probably use a stiff drink right about now anyway. None of this is good, even if much of it was necessary.

A toast to CU Buffs alums and faithful. Mourn. Grieve. We’re right there with you. Nobody was openly rooting for the Buffs not to play football this fall when the word finally came down Tuesday from Mount Larry. Or for Tad Boyle’s men’s basketball program, with all that unfinished business, to be forced to cool its collective heels until after Christmas. But here we are.

A toast to the Buffs’ football seniors and the outstanding juniors, upon whom the onus

falls the most. In Boulder, that’s wide receiver K.D. Nixon, who took his name out of the NFL draft pool for who-knows-what. And linebacker Nate Landman, the rock and anchor on a CU defense that was forced to grow up on the fly last fall.

A toast to new CU football coach Karl Dorrell, and to the longest honeymoon in Buffs history. Thrown onto a moving train in late February, Dorrell needed — deserved — more time to get more talent, more teaching, more of a stamp on a program whose fans have been strapped to an emotional roller-coaster since September 2018. He never asked for this much time, mind you.

A toast to every Olympic sports coach and team, who play to almost none of the crowds of football and men’s basketball and yet sacrifice the same, if not more, in terms of time, blood and tears. Fans of the system have made them pariahs because they don’t turn a profit, ignoring the fact that profit was never supposed to be the point.

A toast to those who’ve pointed out, and justifiably, the circular logic from the Pac-12 poobahs regarding student-athletes’ health, given that they’ve just opened up the possibility of trying to cram two football seasons into the span of about 10 months. The hypocrisy was not lost even on commissioner Larry Scott, who admitted Tuesday that it was, pun intended, among the hardest issues they’ve yet to fully tackle.

A toast to the cynics, who pointed out that the first two Power 5 leagues to hit the eject button on fall football, the Big Ten and Pac-12, were the also the ones whose studentathletes have been making the most stink about expanded players’ rights, including a slice of the revenue pie. And the fact that the leagues still (allegedly) pushing on into the storm all feature broadcast networks that are run by, and distributed by, ESPN.

A toast to the buggers who have to put up with the Cornhuskers, and the world as viewed through Big Red glasses. If we’ve learned anything from the last 17 years, it’s that the University of Nebraska needs to be an independent. A football independent, anyway. The Huskers truly are, in all the best and worst ways, the Notre Dame of the Plains — with all the same crowds, charms, history, hubris, and delusions of past grandeur that peers find insufferable.

At least with Ohio State, which is effectively the northernmost member of the SEC anyway, you could understand the Buckeye proletariat stomping and pouting after being denied a chance to settle old scores with Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban. If not getting to call the shots in the Big Ten bothers Scott

Frost the way not calling them in the Big 12 bothered his mentor, Tom Osborne, there’s the door.

Just make sure you turn in that television check for $50 million before you pound the pavement.