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So maybe it's a good thing we have plenty of time to think. 

As we ponder the period of time when various sports — including college football — can perhaps return in a safe environment, we hear mixed messages. After reading a lot of material during the past few days, my takeaway is nobody really knows when sports will be back in full bloom. 

This week, we heard NFL leaders, after the league's medical director addressed team owners, express confidence their season would begin as scheduled, without conditions. President Donald Trump, during a conference call Saturday with various sports commissioners, said he believes the NFL season should start on time with fans in stadiums by August and September.

Meanwhile, disease experts suggest the possibility feared most in the sports world — no major events for the rest of the year — may be more real than many believe.

“My crystal ball is not just cloudy,� Ali Khan, dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Public Health, told the Washington Post. “It’s black.�

Bottom line, we're left to consider a lot of data and opinions as we attempt to reach the most reasonable conclusions possible. We're also left to formulate our own individual outlook. Which is why I genuinely appreciated Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney's strikingly positive assessment Friday. But Dabo's bright outlook — he believes the 2020 college season will kick off as planned by August despite potential hurdles created by the coronavirus pandemic — stands in stark contrast to that of widely respected ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit.

In an interview on ESPN Radio, Herbstreit said he'll be shocked if there is NFL and college football this fall. He said risk-averse athletic directors won't want to take a chance on a COVID-19 breakout in locker rooms. It's obviously a legitimate concern, and reasonable stance. However, as of early last week, Nebraska athletic director Bill Moos operated with the hope that the Husker football team could make up the 13 lost spring practices sometime in the summer — late June or July — in advance of a fall season.

Another top NU official told me last week that he's moving forward with the idea that a college football season will be played in some form, even if it means pushing back the start of the schedule. In fact, that was his worst-case scenario. 

"My preference is let's get to work and go play," Swinney said during a conference call with media. "That's the best-case scenario, and I think that's what's going to happen. I don't have any doubt. I have zero doubt that we're going to be playing, and the stands are going to be packed."

I much prefer Swinney's positive mindset to a fear-based, doomsday outlook. There's nothing wrong with gravitating toward a positive mindset even during an intensely negative (and scary) time in world history. Some will suggest Swinney is being reckless. But his approach evidently doesn't range too far from the that of the U.S. Tennis Association, which said last week it still plans to stage the U.S. Open as scheduled from late August through mid-September in New York. 

What I appreciate most is the spirit in Swinney's words. We have the smartest people in the world, he said, so we'll figure it out. Let's go to work, he said. Granted, we can't all go back to work. We can't live our normal lives. We all understand the need to be safe and practical. Stay home if you can. Keep a distance from people. Lives are at stake. Even so, I believe we need to be talking every single day about getting back to normalcy — yes, getting back to work. It should be on our lips and in our hearts every single day. 

In that sense, Swinney's words were a gift. We need rays of sunshine amid the gloom. Even though normalcy is essentially impossible at the moment, we still can visualize it in the manner that coaches ask players to visualize winning championships. My sense is we're not doing enough of that. 

Swinney surely was mocked for his sunny outlook. I get that, but only to a point. After all, reasonable people of goodwill can have an honest and open debate. Opinions can differ. Honest scientists can disagree. We're all on the same team here. Through all the discussion, we share the same goal: We want the least number of virus-related deaths as possible while avoiding the point at which the toll of those deaths is exceeded by profound human devastation that will surely result from a prolonged shutdown of our economy, and our priceless civil liberties.

Yeah, it's a heavy conversation. Stick to sports, you might tell me. 

My heavens, I wish I could do that right now.