Growing up in central Illinois, Illini sports were our professional sports team. I didn’t grow up going to the United Center and watching Jordan, or Wrigley and watching Sammy Sosa. I grew up going to Memorial Stadium and the Assembly Hall to watch Juice Williams and Deron Williams. Last year, I stayed with my dad in the stands until 11 pm to watch us lose to Eastern Michigan. EASTERN MICHIGAN!

These players were the ones we clamored for autographs from, not the pros. Our communities feel more connection to the University of Illinois than any professional team, and it’s hard to fault them for it. There’s nothing better than a crisp Saturday morning at Memorial Stadium.

Lately though, pretty much every rational sign has pointed to the idea that College football won’t continue amid our current situation, which some might call a global pandemic. First, it was the Ivy League postponing their season (sound familiar?), then, it was some FCS conferences. This weekend, it was the Mid-American Conference, home to Northern Illinois.

Which brings us roughly to now, where our beloved Power 5 “franchise” is on the chopping block. As I write this, Big Ten presidents and athletic directors are trying to decide whether or not to scrap the 2020 football season. The writing is on the wall, and the motivation for having these “amateur” players continue amid an unprecedented public health emergency is pretty clearly financial, but regardless, it’s decision time, and none of the options are good.

Even so, only one of these options is clear and rational: postpone the fall sports season.

Maybe until spring, maybe scrap the whole thing. Here’s why:

The first, and most obvious reason why power five schools should cancel football is pretty straightforward. Like, something so apparent that the European sports industry realized it from its inception many decades ago: school is for education.

In England, there are no college sports. If an athlete wants to pursue a sport professionally, they are hired by a club and the club provides them education while they train. In return, these clubs make no bones about sports being paramount. They are an athletic club, and their goal is to excel at athletics. Amateurism is almost completely absent. They don’t have to pretend like the NCAA does.

Please don’t misconstrue this as an attack on school sports. I love school sports. Mostly, I love hating other schools (like the north shore private school in Evanston). I love(d) crawling out of a hungover fog, doing shots at 7 am, and setting out across campus to watch Tim Beckman’s teams lose in an 11 am kickoff matchup on BTN+.

But the conflict comes along when these sports get co-opted by education, and by extension, amateurism. It’s the reason players don’t get to profit off of their own names or likenesses while they generate millions. It’s the same reason that a scholarship as compensation. Athletes are considered “amateurs,” and as such, they can not organize, they can not bargain, and most importantly, they are subject to whatever situation their parent institutions finds themselves in, like a pandemic, for example. If this amateurism didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now. The players would have bargained for a bubble (hopefully), and we’d be on our way.

Though amateurism isn’t the root cause of the current COVID college sports purgatory, it certainly contributes to the complex knot that needs to be unraveled.

Next, and perhaps most simply, universities are primarily educational institutions. Yes, they work together with their ADs. Yes, the college “experience” without P5 athletics looks pretty grim, but the University of Illinois, and every institution in the Big Ten for that matter, does not need athletics to function. Not even close.

As an Illini fan, it hurts me to type this, but sports are absolutely ancillary. If me typing that doesn’t make a splash, the financials should. Illini athletics made $118 million in revenue last year. Over the same time period, the University of Illinois brought in almost $900 million in grants and contracts revenues alone. That doesn’t include student tuition, university investments, hospital revenue, or donations.

It’s a simple leverage scenario. The quicker we all agree on this very clear and very important fact, instead of putting our heads in the sand and yelling “LET THEM PLAY!,” the quicker we can get to real, actual solutions.

If the University of Illinois can keep the mitigate the risk to campus even a *little bit* by not having student athletes travel to other campuses and play a contact sport, that’s a good thing. If they let students back into labs before they’re allowed on the practice field, that’s a good thing.

Do you think the 30 Nobel Laureates from Illinois care deeply about football on their campus this fall? How about the presidential advisors and world-class experts in their field? I’d guess not. They care about continuing life-changing research, and that’s what they’re supposed to care about.

The goal here is to open a massive university back up safely, not to put a 2-8 football team on the field at all costs. Academic programs should have priority. If they’re following strict precautions, academic labs should be open before athletic practices.

As much as fans don’t want to admit it, the University’s priorities come first. You may not see a researcher or professor on ESPN or read about them on Twitter, but their work is paramount here. They’re the reason the University sustains (and makes money), not the sports programs.

But the real reason that permeates all of this, one many fans won’t want to admit due to politics, is that our country’s pandemic response has been abysmal. If it had been comparable to our European or Asian colleagues’, we would be on a different path right now, one that might have space for a College Football season.

If you’re mad about not having football, the presidential administration and their constant fumbling at every turn deserves your ire, not those who are simply navigating how to get a research machine back up to speed.

All combined, a terrible response, amateurism, and the university’s educational mission prove it almost impossible to make a case for sports to return this fall. It sucks no matter what angle you look at it from, but a pandemic tends to do that for best-laid plans.

Unfortunately, the group most affected by all of this is the players. Any cancellation should be met with a robust plan from the NCAA; one that grants extra eligibility, health protections, and takes a serious look at allowing players to organize. But knowing the NCAA, I won’t hold my breath. Until then, things will remain precarious.

And also, miss me with that “why are you rooting for the season to be cancelled?” bullshit. No one is rooting for the season to be cancelled, but simply reading the writing on the wall could measure expectations, just like it has everywhere else in the world. It’s not hard to see a house of cards is about to fall.

I hope against hope that Illini sports will return for a spring season, but as with anything else pandemic-induced, we’ll just have to wait and see.