While the country braces, the Ducks reload

After all the fears and concerns are addressed, after the precautions and prescriptions, the death toll, stock market impact, emergency measures and outright hysteria, life will return to normal.

And college football will be there, right where America left it.

By this fall the country will be ready for some good times, a party on the order of V-E Day or the repeal of Prohibition. We'll gather in pubs and eat Track Town Pizza. We'll descend on Autzen Stadium and scream our lungs out. It will be a wake for the Death of Reason and a tonic for our souls, watching some good old fashioned slobberknockin' on the gridiron. Keith Jackson will look on from on high and bless the whole thing.

And oh yeah, the Ducks should still be pretty good at this football thing, contending for the national championship Sabrina Ionescu never got a chance for.

If the spring game is held it won't be attended. Preventative measures will be extreme and at turns draconian. After all of it, however, disasters and extreme trials always call us back to traditions, the comfort of rituals, celebrations; what we know and love as a culture.

College football is the second most popular sport in the country. After the desolate quiet of the cancellation of the entire spring and summer calendar, fall seems like a good target date for hope, normalcy and joy. A little end-of-the-third-quarter dancing in the aisles. Some bellows and boos. Arms thrust high in the air, tears of joy, and high-fiving perfect strangers. By then all but the most over-cautious will have released the death grip on wipes and hand sanitizers. Normal hygiene and good sense will again suffice.

A pandemic on the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu is nothing to sneeze at, particularly one that targets the elderly and vulnerable populations. It's right and prudent to take decisive measures to check the spread of the virus, giving first responders and health care workers a key block at the point of attack and some time to read the blitz.

The Ducks are working out under the care and observation of doctors. And they're going to be pretty good. A source tells me they're likely to add to their depth at quarterback, the last missing piece in a potential run to defend their PAC-12 title.

At this point it looks like they'll get a chance to defend it. It'll be a supreme relief to have something to watch other than another dire warning or news conference, however important they might be.