Rosie,
It's always about money, isn't it. That's also the reason that a lot of people won't stay home from work long enough to get past the contagious stage - they feel that they can't afford to. A lot of students feel that they can't afford to miss classes, (and as you pointed out, they sure can't afford to miss any sports events.
I tried to stay home, (and behave myself), but I had to make a delivery to a feed store, about half-way through my "session", because the store manager insisted that he needed a truck load of bagged corn, and he wasn't concerned about catching anything, even though I explained that I thought I probably had the swine flu. His justification was that there were already a bunch of cases in that small town.
Maybe it's best that everyone catches it now, before it has a chance to evolve into a much more deadly form, because if it should turn deadly, I seriously doubt that we would be able to do a significantly better job of keeping it from spreading. The general population just doesn't seem to have the mindset, nor the discipline, to handle situations such as this, despite all the publicity about it, and based on past performance, the government is even less likely to be able to handle it correctly.
Tex
Hello!! So having 60,000 people all jammed together for a football game, and flu isn't going to be transmitted?? Not to mention the associated gatherings in bars and restaurants and parties associated with the game. 
Somehow having the school with a vested interest in not losing money making the decision doesn't seem right. How about the state Public Health Department? Here is a quote:
It was relatively mild when it first started out and didn't achieve it's virulence until it had spread to Europe and then come back to the United States for the second time. So Tex, your comments about it being better to catch it now has some merit! One of the reasons it spread to quickly and widely was because of WWI. The mass gathering of young men into military encampments and their widespread movement about the country and over to Europe was much to blame. The US government pretty much ignored the warnings of the medical people and went ahead shipping infected units of soldiers all over the world. There are stories of troup transport ships that would leave port in the US and arrive in Europe with most of the soldiers sick or dead. The book was amongst the best I've read, really compelling and hard to put down on many levels. It really goes into the politics of the time, and certainly doesn't give us any confidence in the ability of the government to do what's right (or even sensible). 
