Putting spring football into focus
The Big Ten will evaluate “the possibility of competition in the spring.” The Pac-12 will not return to competition in all fall sports through the end of the calendar year.
From a football perspective, the two Power Five conferences will next be seen in the spring at the earliest, potentially joined by the rest of the Bowl Subdivision. The Atlantic Coast Conference, Big 12 and Southeastern Conference remain scheduled to begin play in September in acceptance of the risks posed by the coronavirus pandemic.
The idea of spring football has gained traction as the backup parachute option for a traditional season: If all else fails, the FBS can pull the rip cord and push all activities forward five months.
“We woke up this morning with a focus on what’s next, and that’s really the spring,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said Wednesday.
Day’s blueprint for the spring is an eight-game season beginning in early January that includes the postseason and allows early enrollees to play in the spring and ensuing fall in one combined season of eligibility. Presenting a plan for the spring would allow teams to find routines and give some of college football’s best players, such as Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, incentive to remain on campus and provide NFL teams with another year of experience rather than opt out and enter the draft process, Day said.
A second Big Ten coach, Purdue’s Jeff Brohm, suggested an eight-game spring season that began near the end of February and finished in May, followed by a 10-game fall season beginning in early October and concluding in January.
With programs such as Ohio State in favor, the concept of spring football is bound to attract a chorus of support from programs in the Big Ten and beyond, should other Power Five conferences join in postponing the coming season.
“In one word, yes, I do think it’s a viable option,” Michigan State athletic director Bill Beekman said Monday.
As these conversations progress in the coming weeks, conferences and universities will need to address the immediate hurdles and the potential longterm ramifications involved with the shift in seasons.
Before enacting any plan, conferences would have to craft schedules that take into account academic calendars, stadium availability and the other sponsored sports in simultaneous competition; map out a way to work within the existing NFL offseason; develop reliable protocols related to the coronavirus in lieu of a potential vaccine; manage the fallout on recruiting; and offer a plan for what to do with teams and players during the empty fall months.
Most of all, conferences must present an unimpeachable argument to combat the obvious health concerns that would arise from asking athletes to compete in two potentially truncated seasons within one calendar year.
There’s “no chance” of playing in the spring given the potential health issues, former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer said Tuesday.
“You can’t ask a player to play two seasons in a calendar year. When I first heard that, I said that. I don’t see that happening. The body, in my very strong opinion, is not made to play two seasons within one calendar year.”
Additional concerns include how to handle transfers, which could mushroom as some leagues decide to shift to the spring and the others remain posed to begin the season as planned.
The same issues and potential roadblocks exist across all fall sports currently pegged to try to play in the spring. In fact, that so many sports will attempt to coexist forms the backbone of one overriding question:
Do athletic departments have the infrastructure to support and conduct a sizable percentage or even all of their sports at the same time?
While every effort might be made to ensure that football has a home in the spring, doing so might come at the expense of sports that provide no revenue to athletic departments.
The large majority of FBS programs use football-only facilities, though there is often the sharing of areas such as the weight room, particularly among the Group of Five conferences. Many athletic departments might find their training personnel stretched thin while trying to provide medical and nutritional assistance for a dozen or more teams. Then there’s the simple matter of allocating physical and financial resources.
As the primary money driver for college athletics, football will come first. For programs such as Nebraska, which estimates a loss of roughly $80 million in revenue this fall and has been vocal in support of trying to create a schedule outside the Big Ten umbrella, any season would help place the athletic department on firmer financial footing.
But what of the other fall sports postponed due to COVID-19, or the non-revenue sports played in the winter and spring? And assuming a return to normalcy, can universities manage the potential participation in two enormous undertakings – college football’s push for the national championship along with the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments – should those events overlap?
In the longer term, moving football to the spring could create a rippling effect on future years, beginning with the ensuing fall season.
“I think the two have to be tied together,” Wisconsin coach Paul Chryst said. “In my mind, we’ve made the decision and we’ve canceled the 2020 season. Now how do we want to do 2021?”
A trimmed spring season would require a similar scissoring to the fall schedule. Would one complete and normal season be worth more than two shortened seasons? Day’s proposal of allowing incoming freshmen who arrive early to play in both the spring and fall at the cost of one year of eligibility would allow programs to maintain scholarship balance across four or five classes. But would non-freshmen enjoy the same option? Would allowing early enrollees to maintain this eligibility unfairly penalize incoming recruits who were not able to arrive until the summer?
Even after formulating a plan for the spring, conferences would need to state their case to players who have recently used the #WeAreUnited and #WeWantToPlay movements in presenting a unified response to issues related to student-athlete rights.
“Let me take a wild guess... hmmm they want us to play in the spring & fall,” Wisconsin safety Eric Burrell posted on his Twitter account. “I wonder why? I’m not the smartest man but they want that cash flow 2 for 1 special.”