Now that the Big Ten has postponed fall sports, including football, the conference has left open the “possibility” of having them play in the spring. …
Now that the Big Ten has postponed fall sports, including football, the conference has left open the “possibility” of having them play in the spring. The Big Ten, which last Wednesday released a conference-only 10-game composite football schedule, announced Tuesday the fall season would not happen because of lingering COVID-19-related issues. On-campus activities were paused in mid-March because of the pandemic. Football teams go through spring practices, but play games and a season in the spring? What would that look like? Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez said during a Big Ten Network interview Tuesday there has been “little discussion about the possibility” because the focus had been on attempting to safely playing in the fall. Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren said on the network that conference leaders will dive into this option now that a decision has been made on the fall. Certainly, the same health and safety considerations given the pandemic will be what guides their decision regarding a spring season. “We’ll seek to hopefully be able to address the opportunities if we can have many of the fall sports we were planning to have this fall, if we can play those in the spring, including football,” Warren said. “We’ve been talking about various scenarios. We will start focusing and see what we can do from a spring standpoint. We’ll continue those discussions and we’ll continually allow the medical information that we have to guide our decisions and do what’s in the best interest of our student-athletes. We will absolutely start to get into greater detail as far as opportunities in the spring.” College football analysts digesting this possibility said it would be unlikely and nearly impossible for players to play two full 12-game regular seasons in a calendar year. But could players play two limited seasons, eight or nine games in the spring and eight to 10 in the fall? “I’m 20-whatever years removed from playing in college football, but it hasn’t been that long, and I think back and I had an opportunity to play 50 games at Michigan, play for 12 years in the NFL, and I know of my time in the NFL, to play two football seasons in one year would have been an impossibility,” said two-time Michigan captain Jon Jansen, now a college football radio analyst on Sirius XM. “It was hard enough to get one in. “But when I was 19 to 22, we started winter conditioning a week,10 days after the bowl game. You will not have as many gains in terms of strength and in terms of skill development between a spring football season and a fall season, but physically I don’t see it as a huge obstacle. Will you have to modify both seasons? One hundred percent.” More: Michigan State grapples with ‘heartbreaking’ decision to postpone fall sports Gerry DiNardo, a former head college coach who is now an analyst on BTN, has a plan for two seasons in one year.
