"Necessity is the mother of invention."
-- Benjamin Franklin

I think last week's football-free Sunday was a patriotic gesture by the NFL. It was necessary to take some time to examine our place in the world. But lest anyone forget: this nation is still about wealth and pro football is still about the Benjamins -- about 60 million of them. And that's why last week's games have been rescheduled for January 5-6. The league needs the $50-60 million in profits that a typical NFL weekend generates.

It would have been better if the NFL left last week's games as a memorial. The empty stadiums were a testament to the fact that sometimes real life transcends a pastime. When thousands of people are murdered, real life should transcend a pastime. Making up those games lessens the impact of having cancelled them in the first place. A silent Week Two was about respect. But a noisy Week Sixteen will be about dollars. And you can bet the league will find a way to play all those lucrative wild card playoff games too.

Look, I don't have a problem with the pursuit of cash and I don't like doing anything for free. But this is a time for reflection. Wasn't it our obsession with and need to be identified with wealth that left us with this huge target on our chests in the first place?

Colleges shouldn't make up last weekend's games either. So what if they play only 10 games instead of 11? What happened on 9/11 shouldn't be forgotten. And the games that didn't happen last week shouldn't happen later just to accommodate the BCS.

I know I'm emotional on this topic. Maybe because during my senior year at Stanford in 1989, a Thursday-afternoon practice was interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake. Maybe I'm emotional because, after watching the field ripple and undulate like water, I went out two days later and played in a meaningless game. Maybe I'm emotional now because I felt guilty then. The knowledge that only 40 miles away, the 880 freeway had become a two-tiered tomb made it difficult to play football. I think now what I thought then: Was it really necessary?

Money, not necessity, is the mother of the revamped schedule. And greed will give birth to an extra week of action in the NFL. Not exactly patriotic, but unfortunately very American.

Alan Grant, a former NFL defensive back, writes football for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at alan.grant@espnmag.com.