“60 Minutes” gave us great PR but, unfortunately, few answers.

It’s great to have media connections in high places, as UNC graduate and CBS producer Draggan Mihailovich put Carolina’s plan to reopen campus front and center in prime-time Sunday night.

There were two features, one on the national TV broadcast and a second online interviewing Bubba Cunningham on sports returning on schedule. Both revealed fairly detailed plans on how the campus would welcome back all students, but they underscored the uncertainty that exists nationwide as infections keep rising.

Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said that the safety of students, faculty and staff were more important than the millions of dollars that could be lost if in-person education was delayed for at least another semester. He and UNC infectious disease expert Dr. Myron Cohen allowed that beating the novel coronavirus has gaping question marks.

Student body president Reeves Moseley joins Guskiewicz and Cohen in committing to develop a widespread culture of student responsibility to follow health expert safety guidelines, and UNC could be a national trendsetter if undergraduates complied en masse.

Cunningham showed great hope and measured confidence in the athletic department’s plan to test all athletes now that they are arriving on campus and to head into NCAA-approved contact drills with a safe roster for all fall sports teams. But Bubba doesn’t say whether all games will be played on schedule because he cannot guarantee it once his teams face opponents from other campuses.

The real question is not whether sports seasons will start, but if they can finish without interruption. While there are provisions to quarantine any athletes who test positive, just as for all students, no one can speak to how many infections could force the shutdown of athletic play and a campus-wide return to digital education.

Guskiewicz has labeled Carolina’s plan as a road map with a number of built-in off-ramps if those numbers grow to an untenable level on campus. What that level is, however, remains solely unknown.

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