HOW VITAL IS IT TO PLAY FOOTBALL AT CU IN FALL?

If Buffs, Pac-12 fail to follow Mountain West’s lead and move football to spring, the jig is up

Simple question, Phil DiStefano: Does the tail wag the dog? The CU Buffs have to decide. You have to decide. Are we an institution of higher learning that also plays football?

Or a football program that just happens to have this massive academic wing attached for ballast?

CSU, where the dumpsters won’t stop burning and the lawyers can’t stop circling, bailed on fall 2020 Monday. The Mountain West just joined the Mid-American Conference on the spring football bandwagon. Plenty of good seats still available.

“As the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has altered our landscape,” Rams athletic director Joe Parker said via a statement, “we have always stressed that the health and safety of our student-athletes and community at large is the most important factor driving our decision-making processes.”

Isn’t that right, Scott Frost? “I know where our university president stands,” Frost, Nebraska’s football coach, told reporters Monday, referring to Huskers boss Walter E. Carter Jr. “And he wants to play.”

CSU football produced $20.1 million in department revenue while raking in $1.1 million in TV rights dollars from the MW during the 2018-19 fiscal year. Nebraska made $59.8 million in football revenue and collected $50 million in TV loot from the Big Ten over that same window. The bigger the fish, the higher the stakes. We get that.

“People need to understand the carnage and aftermath of what college athletics looks like,” Frost continued, “if we don’t play.”

“Carnage?” Carnage? As opposed to the “carnage” of 163,000 American deaths tied to COVID19 as of Monday afternoon?

When did everybody on this planet start speaking Gundy?

DiStefano, the Buffs’ chancellor,

and his Pac-12 peers are expected to vote Tuesday on whether they’re going to delay the inevitable — no college football this fall — or try to find another alley down which they can kick the can.

If they push on, the way the White House and Joel Klatt want them to push on, then the jig is up. Forever. The tail wags the dog. It’s about the money. It was always about the money.

Frost insists his players are safer on campus than at home. In some cases, that may well be true. But no one’s advocating sending all his kids home, either, at least not at this point. Or that they spend an autumn devoid of purpose.

They’re in Lincoln to

learn, right? To advance toward a degree, correct?

Wait. Why are you snickering?

The NCAA came up with the notion, its airtight legal defense, seven decades ago that these are

students. Not employees. Not entertainers. Not contractors signed up to service the lucrative, financially independent athletics arm of the university infrastructure. Students.

So teach them something, Scott.

Tell them about Brady Feeney. Kid’s a lineman at Indiana. That same Indiana team that beat your Huskers in Lincoln last October for the first time in 60 years.

Feeney’s a 325-pound freshman from St. Louis. He got to campus over the summer and tested positive for the coronavirus. COVID knocked him to the ER for 14 days and now his mother, Deborah Rucker, says her giant is battling heart problems.

“He is still experiencing additional symptoms and his blood work is indicating additional problems,” Rucker wrote on Facebook. “Bottom line, even if your son’s schools do everything right to protect them, they CAN’T PROTECT THEM!!”

Show them ESPN’s report on myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that’s allegedly been found in current FBS athletes, an ailment scientists say is caused by viral infections.

“I’m passionate about this because our guys want to play,” Frost said Monday. “I’m not a doctor and I don’t understand a lot of these things. The medical experts that we’re leaning on are the ones that are guiding our decision.”

Who’s running this campus, Walt?

You? Or Frost?

Does the tail wag the dog?

Football is a university’s front porch. It’s the first thing every reporter or booster or policy wonk hears from an athletic director whenever somebody starts complaining that Coach McChuckles makes too much bread.

Or points out that every football locker doesn’t necessarily require its own PlayStation 5 and massage chair.

When a tornado hits, the front porch is often the first to go. And COVID is the logistical disaster that none of us were quite prepared for. Big-time college athletics, least of all.

The difference between now and 1918 — the last time a virus messed up a football season something fierce — is the size and the bilge of the athletic departments trying to navigate the storm.

Alabama football coach Nick Saban currently has 13 “football analysts” — 13! — on his payroll. Why? Because he can.

This beast got very bloated, very wealthy and very, very, very fat. You’re threatening to cut off its food supply. It’s panicking. The tail grew spikes, and now it’s whipping the body of the poor mutt attached to it.

Departmental revenues can be recouped. Porches can be rebuilt. Lives can’t.