IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MONEY. Mid-American Conference teams, including Northern Illinois's football team, suffered most of the scholarship recisions under the new National Collegiate Athletic Association academic performance guidelines. The Mid-American's guidelines are somewhat more stringent than the Association's.

The director of athletics at Northern Illinois came close, this afternoon, to confirming that none of the Mid-American's November football games would be played on Saturday. That takes students out of the classroom or away from their studies on school nights, but it enhances the television opportunities for football.