We knew it then, and we know it now.

Kids, coaches, we know you want to play. We got it. We get it.

Refs, concessions, security, media, grasscutters, cheerleaders, band members, family, relatives, PA announcers, dance line, cities, counties, apartment-dwellers, all income levels, all demographics, all levels of sanity.

Don’t like any of this. Not in the least, not a bit.

We all want games.

We all want movies. We all want restaurants and dine-in and watering holes and concerts and the local bands and food markets and picnics and middle-school games and camps and hugs and high-fives and chest bumps.

You want full stadiums, and people want to fill those stadiums.

We all want our lives back. We’re with ya.

OK. Got it? Clear?

Coming this week

High schools and colleges haven’t been in such a lose-lose situation in the lifetimes of the decision-makers, with a phenomenal pile of considerations that few outsiders acknowledge. A selfish and logic-allergic and information-shunning constituency is making everything worse.

Jim Harbaugh surveys his team? Really? And their response is newsworthy? Coaches and players retweet each other, and whoever else they agree with who thinks they’re offering some brilliant social media observation.

Not brilliant when everybody wants the same thing. We do not need emotional piling on. It’s exhausting to state the obvious like it’s revolutionary or passionate or enlightening.

Along those lines, no, we don’t need a players “movement” about playing, or a petition for a league to change its mind, when the big picture is not just about players playing, not in the least. Again, we know, we know, we know.

That said, indeed there are discussions worth having between student-athletes – don’t forget that label – and colleges. This, though, feels a bit like people are playing games about playing games, which doesn’t help and complicates emotions and an already-weak ability to reason.

Too many people are manipulating a life situation for what is not a life situation. Change aspects of the movement, and the cry would be that whomever was manipulating the moment.

Too many people are acting like victims and martyrs, and it’s almost absurd. This is all bigger than 15-year-olds and 20-year-olds and games.

We have never doubted that people wanted to play. Never, ever, ever. So, ya know, media included, it’s not really remarkable to keep stating the obvious, no matter how eloquently. Let’s not canonize people for stating the obvious, stating what people have thought and said for months – yes, high schoolers, we wanted the spring, too, so the hashtags back then didn’t help except to exacerbate the emotional toll that was coming.

We’ve all agreed with the goal and hope for months. For months.

And look where we are.

We all have hopes for the fall. But we had hopes three months ago. Two months ago. A month ago. We trusted people. And look where we are.

The past several months have given us a number of situations and debates where both sides are right and wrong at the same time, and right and wrong on the same specific topic, yet centuries and galaxies apart in other aspects.

The decision of the Big Ten and Pac-12 isn’t just about players, high school and college. It’s about everybody, and yes, liability. That’s people’s jobs, and to ignore that is shortsighted, hypocritical, and selfish. Those decision-makers have more on the plate to consider than anybody wants to hear about, because it’s complicated and interrupts their Saturday plans.

Fans’ sudden “concern” wasn’t there six months ago and won’t be there six months after everything is back to quasi-normal. The right people and the right sport said the “right” thing, and goodness, the bandwagon filled up. But the noise and second-guessing will remain, as will missing so many points and realities, and the bandwagon will re-empty.

There is just so much more involved than just kids wanting to play and adults wanting to coach, so much more. Can people quit talking about what we all want - again, we all want the same thing, OK? OK - and consider that?

Do folks have any idea how many people it takes to put on one high school football Friday night? Can’t have a game without players, but you can’t have a game without coaches, refs, security, and so on, and you make no money without fans, who then need concessions and bathrooms.

Colleges? Power 5 programs?

The logistics of Vandy and Mississippi State are enough to boggle the mind. Even a game with 10,000 or 20,000 people, while only a third or fourth or fifth of capacity, involves so many people, about as many people as a packed stadium, moreso now because of so much more to do.

Early the week, discussion of a heart issue from COVID led the discussion of canceling or postponing the season. Some officials were concerned – at this still early stage of the virus, since progress has been so slow – about that new medical discovery.

What nerve. Concern about the health of participants - and everybody involved - at the expense of tailgaters and message-boarders and media fanboys and hangers-on. The gall. Looking deeper into the situation than “dang, what will some folks do on Saturdays?”

Only in America 2020 can you catch hell for giving a crap about other people’s physical and mental health.

It’s not just about players. Please realize that. People under 25 can die. And people under 25 can have it, not know it, and passed it on to a 60 year old, who can die. Or not, but can. Much of this isn’t about the 15- or 22-year-olds getting it and getting sick, but passing it along to those who really can.

One cannot, however, die from this virus if they don’t have it, and keeping as many people from getting it remains – easy, easy – the point. How about the 16-year-old who gets it and has no problems but passes it to Grandma?

We’ve been doomed for a while, and will stay fairly doomed. Yes, why we’re here is complicated, and yet not.

The virus wasn’t taken seriously by some national leaders, and state leaders, and local leaders, for months, and somehow to the shock of people, citizens followed the (lack of) lead. We’ve made no progress because it’s been a game, a badge of misguided independence. And that’s another discussion for another time (soon enough).

People sold out, and we simply found out fake and selfish many people actually are. From quoting Bear and Vince and Wooden, and Bazemore and Davis and Richardson and throwing quotememe after quotememe after quotememe on Twitter to abandoning those messages and disciplines.

“Leadership” in many cases failed, at least to a point, when challenged with the complicated and unfamiliar. Knee-jerk reactions, passing the buck on decision-making and then complaining about it, abandoning principles, coddling, none of which helped with the kids, or adults who could’ve used some guidance.

Hope folks are happy. By doing what they wanted instead of what was right for others, this is where we are. Have said for months: we’re not in this together, we’re in this at the same time.

Maybe we’d have been where we are today eventually anyway. We’ll never know because millions of people in America made sure we’d never know. A little concern for others and a lot of concern for reality and we’d get half a football season or more, a fall sports season. Had some practicing followed the preaching, had so many sports fans followed some sports mantras …

One can still debate a situation while doing what’s right, what helps others, what would’ve helped us be closer to a fall sports season.

But again, what was sort of annoying back when this all emerged and the shutdown started was the rant from high school players and coaches about playing, as if the virus was simply a burp interrupting their lives, folks showing no concern about what was actually going on: sickness and death and the unknown.

The thought here then was that the expected elimination of graduations as we know them was much, much, much worse than losing spring sports, as painful as that was. Again, graduation is a lifetime event for many more people, and schools and colleges stretched to the limits what they could do safely and keep some ceremony involved. It just wasn’t the same, not even close, but it was better than nothing.

Those who were supposed to be wiser – adults – didn’t help the cause with the kids, for all sorts of reasons. The pouting about not playing didn’t help with understanding and coping with what had started, and how bad it could get.

Months later, the same wishful thinking.

All people had to do was wear a freakin’ mask a little bit, pay attention to people with expertise. Not eight hours a day straight. Maybe read something and use a little common sense and realize only the real front-liners are masked for substantial periods of time.

Nope. Second-guessing and pouting were more satisfying, apparently.

And here we are, with two major conferences pulling the fall plug, no fall sports championships in Division I – so many shoes are left to drop - and people refuse to understand and adjust.

The decisions made are about more than just players and teams. Again.

The decisions aren’t about you, or me, or whoever, and yet they are. People of some substance don’t want people sick or dying when it can be prevented. No, you can’t stop everything, but that doesn’t mean you don’t try.

Kind of like sports. You learn what you can and prepare for what you know, and listen. You can’t win ‘em all, but you go down fighting and trying, not whimpering.

Hah.

People chose paranoia over reality. Antagonism over understanding. Knee-jerk over patience. Conspiracy over science. Posturing over stability. And themselves over every-freakin-body else. Period.

“Never let it be said I didn’t do the least I could for mankind at crunch time.”

That’s what this is in large part about, the cause of humanity and life and health and other people, more than games. Other people. People different than you. People you don’t know.

The greater good, a cause greater than me.

People in charge not being competent and honest and Americans not caring about Americans has America in this situation. College football – like many social and pleasure and entertainment aspects of our lives – is only part of the fabric of our country.

And yes - a thousand times yes - we want people playing and coaching, because we all want what we had. Everybody, which does include millions of people unattached to football.

A lot more unselfishness across the board, and we’d have less pining about playing and more playing. There’s still a chance, yet there’s no chance. A sports mentality, and we’d have a chance.