For weeks, speculation has been rampant about whether college football will return this fall or at all this next season. Kirk Herbstreit has weighed in, the conference commissioners have stated that football isn’t happening without students and various media personalities have speculated endlessly. But this week, we have some actual movement and the key first steps toward a potential return of the game we all love.

This week, Mun Y. Choi, the University of Missouri President, released a statement with plans “to return to in-person operations and classes this fall.” Mizzou leadership notes new procedures that will likely be in place to mitigate the likely still lingering virus:

“We expect staff and faculty will return in phases once the pandemic reaches new stages of decline. We are also developing new social distancing procedures that could impact how we teach our classes, run our meetings or conduct our research. With caution and creativity, the traditions and rich experiences at Mizzou will resume.”

With caution and creativity. I like that.

Purdue President Mitch Daniels went even further on details when announcing Purdue’s intentions to resume in-person activities this fall. Daniels, a former Governor of Indiana, discussed the unique challenge of a university in that it is mostly composed of two distinct groups: younger students and older faculty:

A place like Purdue may be in better position to resume its mission. Our campus community, a “city” of 50,000+ people, is highly unusual in its makeup. At least 80% of our population is made up of young people, say, 35 and under. All data to date tell us that the COVID-19 virus, while it transmits rapidly in this age group, poses close to zero lethal threat to them.

Meanwhile, the virus has proven to be a serious danger to other, older demographic groups, especially those with underlying health problems. The roughly 20% of our Purdue community who are over 35 years old contains a significant number of people with diabetes, asthma, hypertension, and other ailments which together comprise a very high percentage of the fatal and most severe COVID-19 cases.

We will consider new policies and practices that keep these groups separate, or minimize contact between them. Literally, our students pose a far greater danger to others than the virus poses to them. We all have a role, and a responsibility, in ensuring the health of the Purdue community.

To address this challenge, Daniels discusses a number of planned measures but notes that this is just an overall plan that will likely evolve as more information comes to light in the days and weeks ahead:

The approaches below are preliminary, meant to be illustrative of the objectives we will pursue. View them as examples, likely to be replaced by better ideas as we identify and validate them.

They could include spreading out classes across days and times to reduce their size, more use of online instruction for on-campus students, virtualizing laboratory work, and similar steps.

We will look to protect the more vulnerable members of our community by allowing (or requiring, if necessary) them to work remotely. Like the rest of society, we are learning a lot right now about which jobs are most amenable to remote work, and about new and better ways to do such work.

We intend to know as much as possible about the viral health status of our community. This could include pre-testing of students and staff before arrival in August, for both infection and post-infection immunity through antibodies. It will include a robust testing system during the school year, using Purdue’s own BSL-2 level laboratory for fast results. Anyone showing symptoms will be tested promptly, and quarantined if positive, in space we will set aside for that purpose.

We expect to be able to trace proximate and/or frequent contacts of those who test positive. Contacts in the vulnerable categories will be asked to self-quarantine for the recommended period, currently 14 days. Those in the young, least vulnerable group will be tested, quarantined if positive, or checked regularly for symptoms if negative for both antibodies and the virus.

Some in the media respond to these releases by university leadership with skepticism and snark. Daniels’ statement was met with especially harsh response by some in the media, but I tend to think some opinions are based more on Daniels’ previous career in politics than perhaps his current university policies. I don’t have a strong view on Daniels one way or another and will admit that I’m not wired into Purdue University policy much, but I do appreciate the level of detail and thoughtfulness that seemed to go into Daniels’ statement.

There was a clear articulation of the challenge at hand, an outline of potential solutions to address the challenge and an acknowledgment that these plans will evolve over time as we learn more. What more would we want from university leadership? Shouldn’t we be applauding those that are attempting to lead in these unique circumstances that we’ve never dealt with before?

A common criticism here is that schools might rush to re-open because they need the money. Like any leader, they must balance a number of priorities. The health of students and faculty is an obvious priority, but so is ensuring that students have an actual school to return to. If leadership maps out plans that obviously undermine the health of students, then sure, let’s open up the criticism, but I don’t see that in these two statements. To compare Choi and Daniels to, say, leadership at Liberty University, which didn’t seem overly concerned with the spreading virus in March, is ridiculous. The tone and thoughtfulness in both Purdue and Mizzou’s statements were right on point, in my opinion.

Plus, can we acknowledge that some kids actually want to go to college this fall?

Finally, let’s talk football. Getting back to a scenario where college football happens is not the most important thing in the world. But, it’s OK to acknowledge that college football returning is a good thing. These players have worked their tails off their entire lives to play college football.

The coaches, too! Spare me your arguments about these coaches being overpaid. The vast majority of these coaches work decades, moving their families all over the country, desperately trying to hang on to some sort of paid position coaching the sport they love.

Moreover, like it or not, college football is a major part of university life for students, a major part of the social fabric for millions of fans and a crucial economic component for countless businesses and families in college towns across the country.

So, please, let’s applaud the university leaders who are attempting to actually lead that during an incredibly challenging environment. These leaders aren’t perfect, but articulating plans to bring their schools back into a degree of normalcy during whatever the “new normal” world will look like later this year is a good thing.

Colleges re-opening is a good thing.

And, yes, college football returning is a good thing.