Eligibility
This is a whole lot easier than it’s being made out to be … for now.
This will be a total mess when and if players start to opt out and keep their eligibility for down the road, but that has to be dealt with no matter what happens with spring ball.
Basically, you transfer a football season that was supposed to be held from late August until mid-January of 2020 and early 2021, and you move it to late January to around early-Mayish before finals kick in.
Everything stays the same. If you were a sophomore with three seasons of eligibility remaining in September of 2020, football-wise you’re a sophomore with three seasons of eligibility remaining in the winter of 2021.
NFL Draft
Whatever.
How many NFL players do you think each college football team has?
Only three schools – LSU, Ohio State and Michigan – lost ten players or more to the 2020 NFL Draft. Only ten schools lost five players or more to the draft. For the most part, everyone outside of the elite would likely lose one or two starters and would be more than fine.
Of course Ohio State, Alabama, Clemson, and some other big-names would lose parts, but it’s not like everyone would get gutted. On the flip side, players might want to stick around to up their stock.
There are two ways this might work. 1) If the Trevor Lawrences of the world want to leave tp preserve and prepare, cool. Go be a professional. If they want to play more college football, then they can wait until 2022. Or, more likely …
2) The process gets moved a bit with a combine in late May and a draft in mid-June. NFL talent types would whine, and it would mess up free agency, but it’s workable.
Recruiting
Double whatever.
If anything, no fall football and a move to the spring could be a boost considering there’s now more of an emphasis on the December 16th early recruiting period.
Freshman won’t be eligible for the spring – they start rolling in the fall just like normal – and to all those who’ll complain about coaches having to do their normal spring recruiting while also coaching, they’ll survive. Coaches are ALWAYS recruiting.