Max Olson of The Athletic reported today that the National Junior College Athletic Association is expected to announce Monday that it will be moving its football season to the spring.
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
The news comes after conferences including the Big Ten and Pac-12 announcing conference-only schedules for the fall season and the Ivy League cancelling their falls seasons entirely.
Though there is still time before the season is scheduled to kick off in early September, there are now more and more indications of the season being pushed back or not being able to happen at all.
You may remember before March Madness when the Ivy League cancelled their conference tournament days before other conferences were forced to do the same.
If that trend means anything, the likelihood of college football being cancelled this fall seems to be increasing every time news breaks about schedule changes and cancellations.
Here’s what Olson had to say about JUCO football and its decision to move to a spring season:
The National Junior College Athletic Association is expected to announce Monday that it will move to a spring football season, two head coaches told The Athletic. Teams would play up to eight games with preseason practices beginning on March 1 and the regular season beginning at the end of March and extending through the end of May.
NJCAA president and CEO Dr. Christopher Parker and the NJCAA’s presidential advisory council announced their recommendation to move the majority of its sports to spring seasons on Thursday. The NJCAA board of regents will meet Monday to determine the official plan. Parker confirmed to The Athletic that an eight-game spring football schedule is “the direction it would be heading in.”
“We would like to play football this fall,” Parker said. “But I think from a national perspective, moving it is probably the right decision holistically.”
The recruiting impact of this news aside, there seems to be higher and higher chance each day that there will be no Wisconsin football this fall let alone none all year.
How this may affect the NFL draft, player eligibility and the NFL dreams of players around the country is an issue far-off in the distance. But if the NJCAA is logistically able to play a spring season it would not be surprising if FBS conferences followed suit and found a way to play the 2020-21 season.