The earth keeps shifting under our feet in the world of scholastic football. The state of Texas is unsure if it can play football this fall, which is a deafening statement about the seriousness of COVID-19. Now comes this news from the junior college ranks:
Junior college football is moving to a spring season. The NJCAA will announce its plan Monday. It’s another unique twist in this unprecedented recruiting cycle.
On the impact of what’s happening at the JC level: https://t.co/sXBCUcIoVf
— Max Olson (@max_olson) July 12, 2020
I’m not going to offer an opinion on whether this dooms college football for the fall. I am merely going to keep repeating the biggest point we all need to absorb and process: We’re not living in a normal situation. Any people still clinging to the idea that we will have a normal college football game experience, and everything that involves, need to let go of that.
Maybe we will still have games to play and watch this fall, but if we do, they aren’t going to be the normal games we are used to loving, and shouting about, and getting worked up about. If we do have football, it will be very different.
What this JUCO story means is that recruiting will be profoundly chaotic and disorganized in the near future. We shouldn’t even assume that spring football will be played; this plan by the National Junior College Athletic Association, much like the Big Ten and Pac-12 plans to have conference-only schedules, are attempted adjustments.
Emphasize the word “attempted.”
This hardly guarantees the Big Ten and Pac-12 will, in fact, play football this fall. The conferences are merely trying to give themselves better odds of playing football, even as the terrible COVID-19 news sweeps across the country. The virus — as we have told you from the start — is driving the bus. College football is on the bus. If the virus gets worse, college football will get off the bus. If the virus stabilizes, college football can remain on the bus and arrive safely at its destination (a fall season with 10 games played and TV money recouped, staving off added layers of financial disaster).
It’s the same with the JUCO spring football plan: It is just that — a plan. It doesn’t offer any guarantee of actually playing. It is merely the NJCAA’s best attempt to get some games played and give JUCO athletes a meaningful experience, so that they can show the big colleges what they are made of.
We will have much more to say about spring football if fall football is canceled. We haven’t arrived at that point yet, so there’s no reason to address the subject now. We will cross that bridge when we get to it. Yet, the mere possibility of spring football invites important questions about the ability of recruits to play in the spring and the autumn of the same calendar year. That topic will have to be examined in great detail as we consider the large-scale effects on recruiting in the Power Five conferences and the entire FBS.
As with everything else in the world of COVID-19, stay tuned for new developments.