When the Big West Conference announced on Wednesday that it was postponing fall sports, setting up the first autumn without University of Hawaii Rainbow Wahine volleyball in 47 years, the school was quick to note what wasn’t affected in the season.

“This decision does not impact football, of which UH is affiliated with the Mountain West conference…” the school said.

Which, if it hadn’t already, immediately raises to the forefront the question: If there is to be no volleyball, soccer or cross country in the fall due to COVID-19 concerns, how can there be football?

If we are talking “an abundance of caution,” as the phrase of the month goes, then why throw it to the wind when the first spirals start flying?

If they are concerned about volleyball and soccer players and cross-country runners spreading the virus through play, practice and travel, then what about football with its collisions a minute, pileups, much wider rosters and longer road trips?

Football is the 800 lb. gorilla in the conversation about when to resume college sports and it is looming larger each passing day as college administrators look at the tide of red ink rapidly rising around them.

Football traditionally pays a lot of bills around athletic departments, but only when it is played. If it isn’t, the TV cameras and the big checks that accompany them go away. So do a lot of other things.

So far only the Ivy League and a few smaller conferences, for whom money isn’t the driving force, have exhibited the fortitude to pull the plug on fall football or consider moving it to the spring.

The NCAA’s Board of Governors had the issue of scrapping the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs on its agenda last week and punted. But it is scheduled to meet again Tuesday to confront the conundrum of the summer.

That’s one headache the Big West, which does not offer football as a conference sport (though three schools, UH, Cal Poly and UC Davis, play it in other leagues), does not have to wrestle with.

Meanwhile, the Mountain West, which has so far been content to sit on the sidelines and be buffeted by what the Big Boys of the Big Ten, Pac-12 and elsewhere in the Power Five conferences decide, will be on the clock this coming week.

The MWC is between the Rockies and a hard place. With 12 members spread over eight states across 3,340 miles, its schools span the range of COVID-19 results. Many of which haven’t been good, especially the raging hot spot of California, where UH football is scheduled to play three road games this season.

The numbers tell us that things haven’t exactly been looking up at home, either, with the state averaging 49 new cases a day over the past 10 days and hitting the highest levels of infection since the count started in February.

Wednesday UH said it will push back the planned start of its training camp from Friday to next week.

Patience in deciding whether or not to play football this fall is welcome. But that same abundance of caution exercised in the decision to postpone the other fall sports is due football and those who play it, too.

These are perilous times and however big the business of college football, it shouldn’t override the risk of the athletes’ health.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.