Every available tea leaf and off-the-record source in the Big Ten suggests the conference is on the verge of pulling the plug on fall sports, namely football. The teams can’t practice in full pads. Campus leaders keep having hastily called meetings. Athletic directors privately acknowledge they are staring into the abyss.
Nothing is official, but if the obvious becomes the inevitable then it is a massive blow to a way of life for tens of millions of fans, let alone the players, coaches and staff that engage in this uniquely and addictively wild American pursuit known as college football.