SALT LAKE CITY — The past two years, startup professional football leagues have tried spring football, hoping to establish a foothold in the football world by playing during a time of year that is barren of games.
Neither league panned out, as both the Alliance of American Football — which included the Salt Lake Stallions — and the second iteration of the XFL never finished their first season.
Could the 2021 spring bring football yet again, this time for a different reason?
With the world in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 college football season closing in quickly, that scenario is being scrutinized more closely.
ESPN explored the idea of spring football at the collegiate level, days after both the Big Ten and Pac-12 made the decision to play only conference opponents this fall. Other Division I leagues — the Ivy League and Patriot League — have canceled fall play, with the Ivy hoping to move fall sports to the spring.
A decision announced Monday has already ensured there will be spring football in Utah next year: the National Junior College Athletic Association said it will move the majority of its fall sports to the spring of 2021. That move will include Snow College’s football team.
This is all happening as COVID-19 numbers are surging across the United States. Tuesday would have marked 50 days until BYU and Utah opened the 2020 season, and Utah State would have hosted Washington State, but both games are canceled because of the Pac-12 decision.
For the Cougars, they already have five games canceled with the Big Ten and Pac-12 going conference-only, while Utah State has two. It’s unknown how Utah’s schedule could change, as the Pac-12 said it will announce details for league-only play by July 31.
While no other Division I leagues have made decisions on fall football, there is a high level of uncertainty surrounding the 2020 season and whether the college game could move to a spring season.
“I think we need to be prepared to do it, and I think it should be viewed as a viable option. We’re going to learn so much from the NBA and NHL and Major League Baseball in the next few weeks, and if, for example, those efforts go poorly, it’s probably going to be a really critical data point for us, and we’ll argue for delay. If that occurs, I think you’ve gotta be open to the spring.” — Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick
“I think we need to be prepared to do it, and I think it should be viewed as a viable option,” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick told ESPN. “We’re going to learn so much from the NBA and NHL and Major League Baseball in the next few weeks, and if, for example, those efforts go poorly, it’s probably going to be a really critical data point for us, and we’ll argue for delay. If that occurs, I think you’ve gotta be open to the spring.”
On Monday, athletic directors of SEC institutions met to discuss the situation. On Tuesday, the league announced it will postpone the start of women’s volleyball, soccer and cross-country competition through at least Aug. 31.
On “The Paul Finebaum Show” Monday, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said his league will wait as long as possible, aiming for a late July decision about football. That will give the league extra time to monitor the coronavirus numbers and news.
“There are any number of opportunities to learn from, which is the way we’ve always viewed what would play out,” Sankey told Finebaum, according to AL.com. “You go back to April, one of the guiding points from our faculty members, to take as long as you can in your decisions because you will have better information.
“My comments over the weekend on ‘Marty and McGee’ are an indication the trends are not what we desire, not what we experienced a bit earlier in the summer, very much in the wrong direction. That’s problematic. That doesn’t mean that’s the finish line and things won’t change. We’ve seen the news around COVID-19 alter itself in different ways over weeks. What we’ve identified is an opportunity in late July for an important check-in to see what our public health reality is.”
Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, while agreeing with Swarbrick that spring football is a viable option, said it wouldn’t be the first, or even second, choice for the top level of college football.
“I think it would be a really big leap to say, ‘OK, we’re going to shut it down in the fall, and move it all to the spring,’ because there isn’t a whole lot of certainty in the spring, either. Having said that, I don’t consider it an infeasible option. I just wouldn’t call it first choice,” Bowlsby told ESPN.
A move to the spring would hopefully provide a better opportunity for there to be a vaccine in place or better medical advances in relation to the coronavirus. That’s no guarantee, though, and could prove problematic if the sport moves to the spring and is delayed because of the coronavirus.
ESPN’s Mark Schlabach and Heather Dinich outlined how a spring season could play out for college football, explaining an ideal scenario where student-athletes return to campus in January, then have four to six weeks of preseason practice, with the season starting in mid-February. A potential issue to deal with, though, is that the traditional flu season happens in January and February, “when epidemiologists fear the effects of the coronavirus on the health care system might be worse,” the ESPN duo wrote.
“We don’t know that there will be a vaccine. And if there is, it’s likely to go to the people who need it the most right away. Whether it would be widespread enough to go to the student-athletes is very, very hard to say,” American Athletic Conference commissioner Mike Aresco told ESPN. “You can’t rely on that. If you don’t play in the fall, and the pandemic is still around, how do you justify playing in the spring?”
There are other logistics to consider when trying to decide if spring football is realistic for the sport. Would top college athletes — ones who are expected to go professional — play a spring college season if the NFL is able to play in the fall? Two of the nation’s top teams have quarterbacks — Clemson with Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State with Justin Fields — who are expected to go high in next year’s NFL draft. Many have also predicted former Desert Hills offensive tackle Penei Sewell will leave for the NFL after his junior season and be a top-five pick as well.
Among the issues that student-athletes could face is the inability to participate in either the NFL scouting combine or school pro days and potentially risk injury just months before the 2021 NFL Draft, which is set for April 29 to May 1 in Cleveland. Also, athletes could face a scenario where they play college in the spring, then in the NFL in the fall.
“It’s hard, it’s hard,” a parent of a top 2021 pro prospect told 247Sports’ Chris Hummer. “To ask a kid to play a college season and an NFL season right on top of that is pretty hard. That’s a lot of football in one calendar year, and there’s a lot of risk if he’s projected high.”
Another part of the equation is recruiting. The sport has an early signing period in December, with the traditional signing day in February. Could early enrollees be eligible to play in spring 2021? The Athletic’s Ari Wasserman discussed that possibility in a college football mailbag, writing, “Could the NCAA keep the scholarship limit at 85 and let the teams most impacted by early NFL departures fill their rosters with early-enrolled 2021 prospects? How fun would that be?”
Wasserman then shot down that idea, primarily because of player safety. Normally, early enrollees would have spring practices and summer conditioning to get ready for their first college season. In this scenario, a true freshman would have little time to prepare for that first season in college.
“And keep in mind, there is a good chance they would be enrolling without having played a senior season of high school football, which would make it even more dangerous if they go almost two years without taking a full-speed snap,” Wasserman wrote.
If it comes to it, Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley sounds open to the idea of spring football.
“I think there is some work that’s going to have to be done on the organizational side of it and there will be issues with it,” Riley told ESPN. “I’ve heard the weather concern, but football is played in cold weather all the time. I don’t think that’s very legitimate, in my opinion.”
The Sooners’ coach also pointed out a move to the spring likely would involve a modified schedule, with the possibility of playing the next season months later in the fall.
“It’d probably be a (spring) conference season and postseason only,” Riley said. “We’ve seen often teams go in and play well into January in the College Football Playoff and start spring practice at some point in February and nobody says a word about that. You’d have to adjust your schedule to give players plenty of time off to get their bodies back in the summer. Maybe a little later start back the next fall.”