The Pac-12 Conference, certain on Aug. 11 it wouldn't have a football season in 2020, instead released a seven-game schedule Saturday, including road openers Nov. 7 for both Washington schools, the Huskies at Cal and the Cougars at Oregon State.

As has become the recent custom, the Apple Cup will again be the day after Thanksgiving, this year Nov. 27 at Martin Stadium in Pullman. It will be the first rivalry game for both head coaches, UW's Jimmy Lake and WSU's Nick Rolovich.

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We assume University of Washington football coach Jimmy Lake made a wise choice of profession, particularly if his second choice was to become a public health official.

In a Zoom conference in mid-August, Lake's understanding of the unanimous decision by the Pac-12 Conference to abandon the 2020 football season was so solid that he said the SEC, ACC and Big 12 would shortly see their collective folly in trying to play in a pandemic when much had to be learned about COVID-19.

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I wish there was the equivalent of an air quality index meter for this sort of thing. Or maybe something like an antigen test. But there is no plausible marker to measure what's happening. So in the absence of a quantifier, I'm going to give it at least an identifier.

The Foghorn Leghorn Seattle Sports Week: A Set of the Most Unheard of Things I've Ever Heard Of.

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For those wondering how the smart people at all the Power 5 universities could look at similar data and come to different conclusions regarding whether to attack or retreat from COVID-19, Huskies rookie head football coach Jimmy Lake has an opinion on that.

"I believe all three other conferences are going to follow suit (canceling) in due time,” Lake said Friday on a Zoom conference with reporters. He believes the information upon which the Pac-12 and Big Ten conferences acted in canceling football and other fall sports for 2020 will become apparent to the SEC, ACC and Big 12.

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Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh grabbed a figurative broom Monday morning and began sweeping out the tide. He released a statement pleading for the 2020 college football season to happen.

"I'm not advocating for football this fall because of my passion or our players' desire to play but because of the facts accumulated over the last eight weeks since our players returned to campus on June 13," he wrote. He went on to cite the fact that the Wolverines athletic department has had no positives among the latest 353 players, coaches and staffers tested.

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Guess we'll see who's boss now -- the universities or the football teams.

In a letter to students Thursday, University of Washington president Ana Mari Cauce wrote that more than 90 percent of classes will be online this fall. The decision was not a surprise, and it follows a similar decision July 23 announced by Washington State.

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The NCAA's worst nightmare is becoming a reality: An organized revolt by football players at big-time schools to end the long-established collective exploitation of  athletes.

The argument could be made that the revolt couldn't have been more poorly timed, when a pandemic threatens to wipe out a season of the cash cow of football. The response: The NCAA has had 114 years to reform itself, encouraged by many inside and outside to do so. It whiffed.

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The Pac-12 Conference produced Friday its best shot at a 2020 football schedule, virtually daring the coronavirus to do its worst. So far in the U.S., it has done that very well.

Unless some drastic changes occur in federal leadership and public behavior, it won't be played. But, like a miracle, maybe COVID-19 will disappear.

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Jen Cohen is about as earnest, enthusiastic and successful an athletics director as there is in the ruthless world of big-time college sports. As a Tacoma kid, she grew up enthralled by University of Washington sports. Since her 2016 appointment to succeed Scott Woodward as athletics director, she's been in her dream job.

So as you can imagine, the last seven months for her have been an unyielding nightmare.

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The thresher of the coronavirus continues to make hay of optimistic sports schedules. The Pac-12 Conference Friday followed the Big Ten Conference's lead and made the football schedules conference-only, meaning that Washington's September games against Sacramento State and Utah State joined Michigan on the discard pile.

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The coronavirus, always in the lead, is beginning to put distance between its relentless self and the local and national sports sensibilities.

The highlight event of the Seattle sports calendar in September, the visit of the Michigan Wolverines and coach Jim Harbaugh to Husky Stadium for a season-opening game Sept. 5 against Washington, was cancelled Thursday.

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Those darn college kids. Don't they know their near-constant desires to get drunk and laid are in the way of the entire purpose of universities, which is to stage college football?

Life is full of hard decisions, kids. You can't always get what you want, wrote Mick Jagger wrote a couple of generations ago. But if you try sometimes, you get what you need.

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This month the NCAA is distributing about $225 million to member schools. Cool -- until it is realized that the expected payout was $600 million. The difference is due largely to the cancellation of the men's basketball tournament because of the coronavirus and all the clean protocol in the stadium, you can click here for read the new protocols.

Now you know why the University of Washington athletics department gave itself a 15 percent haircut Friday.

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Now we know what new Huskies football coach Jimmy Lake thought about the quarterback crew he inherited from Chris Petersen:

Help!

Kevin Thomson, a lightly recruited QB in 2014 -- yes, 2014 -- from Auburn Riverside High School who became the Big Sky Conference offensive player of the year at Sacramento State, is transferring as a graduate and will be immediately eligible at Washington, his third school in seven years.

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Huskies football coach Jimmy Lake enters the home of prized California high school five-star recruit Latissimus Dorsey.

Dorsey: Whatcha got for me, coach?

Lake: Serious Seattle bling. We have a new football video game, MadMax 2022, from Nintendo, which wants your exclusive endorsement. We have a paid internship from Microsoft in their G5 Deathstar program that won't require work except for you hosting its YouTube channel in the summer. And finally, we have an unlimited account for you at Seattle's most unaccountably downscale hipster joint, Dick's. Package's first-year value: $150,000.

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Only 42, new University of Washington football coach Jimmy Lake doesn't have a lot of room to talk about "back in the old days."

Nevertheless, during an update teleconference call this week with area reporters, he did. And said something perhaps unintentionally prophetic.

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A campus statue isn't likely to be part of Jim Lambright's football legacy at the University of Washington. Which doesn't mean he won't tower in the minds of players he coached for 24 years as a Huskies assistant coach and six years as head coach.

Besides, any statue won't be as stout as Lambo. Nor as purple.

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Given the resources and intensity the NFL brings to its annual scouting combine in Indianapolis, it is remarkable how many whiffs occur in the draft. But hey, that's the beauty of we humans -- much as we seek order, calm and predictability, sometimes the chosen people don't do the voodoo like you want them to.

Which brings us to Jacob Eason.

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During his eight-year tenure as Washington State's football coach, I never figured out Mike Leach. I don't feel too bad, since I don't think anyone else figured him out, either.

There's no denying his football success: A 36-36 conference record in Pullman is nearly like Danny DeVito leading the NBA in rebounding.

There's also no denying his eccentrism tended to exasperate and enervate.

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The first official act of Jimmy Lake as University of Washington head football coach was to fire two offensive assistants that he worked alongside Saturday at the Las Vegas Bowl, coordinator Bush Hamdan and tight ends coach Jordan Paopao, the Huskies announced in a statement Sunday afternoon.

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