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This all feels so backwards.

The academically distinguished Big Ten cancels their season, and all the fans of B10 teams bitch and moan. 
The academically limited SEC plans on playing and recruiting teams from other conferences, dragging its feet on prudence, and is lauded.

This is bizzaro-world. 

The B10 is being proactive and prudent.  These are kids - kids that can spread the virus as much as anyone.  A low % of them will be hospitalized and a still lower % will die.....but those numbers are >0%. 

Some of you are in rare form today.

Well if the players unanimously want to play like for example at Ohio State, and can opt out at any time but don’t, and the parents of the players have put in writing that they support playing, and the coaches and assistant coaches all agree then why does the Big Ten have the right to tell them they can’t?  They say they feel less likely to spread it in this environment. They are doing everything possible with masks and distancing, housing arrangements and everything else.

When should they be allowed to play? And there’s a vaccine? What if there isn’t one? You’re partially right this is bizarro world but for the exact opposite reasons that you state

So what was the point of releasing that brand new schedule last week, with tons of bye weeks built in just in case there was an outbreak? Was it all just optics?

Exactly.  What changed in a week?

Certainly sounds grave. There must be a real disconnect between the athletic departments and the administrations for this to shake out this way.

Personally, I don't know. The overall statistics present that this has a very low risk for college age people. That said, as far as I can tell two players have already had serious symptoms, which gives me pause.

I think part of it is just the nature of the sport. 

Golf can go 100% without a "bubble" because social distancing is easy and it's a personal sport so it's basically just a player and his caddy in close contact. Something like baseball is not doing well because even there there's a significant amount of distancing, it's still a large team of players being together. Basketball is doing great with a bubble, but probably couldn't exist without it. Basketball requires extremely close contact. 

Football is basically a perfect storm of bad for this virus. You have very large teams (roster of 53 in NFL, 85+walk-ons in NCAA), coaching staffs, trainers, etc. Neither the NFL or the NCAA is creating a "bubble", and you really can't do that with the NCAA because these players need to go to classes too. And you have absolutely insanely close contact basically on every play. 

I said last week imagine if one player on the OL is asymptomatic but contagious on game day. That player will be in the huddle with his teammates on every play. That player will be blocking numerous defenders in very close contact, breathing on them, etc. Especially because defensive lines rotate a bunch of players through. That player will end up in piles with his teammates and opponents. 

One contagious player would lead to dozens of infections IMHO. There's no way to play the game with distancing. There's no way to create a "bubble". And because there are SO many players, coaches, etc (>200 individuals at a game counting players, coaches, trainers, officials) the odds are exceptionally high that SOMEONE will have the virus. 

An infected player, on the field, in the game of football... That's a superspreader event, and given that you may not know until several days after the game that the infection even existed, the amount THOSE newly infected players might infect, both on the team and around the campus, would be insane.

I just don't see them going forward with it. 

Meanwhile little league baseball has been going on for at least a month, out here. They and theirs must be made of sterner stuff than these big bad college athletes.

This is getting ridiculous.

The bolded part interests me because it implies, as I read it, that we're sort of reducing it to taking risks is an act of being brave (or something akin to that). 

But in reality, compartmentalizing risk isn't really an act of bravery. I went to a gathering 7 hours away with people from 3-4 different regions. It was in many ways risky on this front. But that doesn't make me brave. It makes me a person who pretends a risk isn't there. There are all sorts of moments like this, many that could be categorized as being irresponsible or reckless. 

Now I'm not strongly saying little league is either of those last two things. But we often cast it as a case of doing a risky thing is a act with some nobility, and in a lot of cases, it really isn't.