I'm there with you... maybe, maybe using the sheets API to create a simpler front end for very specific use cases, like an individual seeing their assignment for the day, or maybe texting everyone that info.

As much as people will rely on databse (rdbms/sql) backed applicatons, in the end a lot of the business world runs on spreadsheets... Not only that, but excel, and I'm assuming plenty of others have integration points for pulling data from other resources... Spreadsheet masters can do very impressive things with what appears to be a simple tool.