NCAA football should just be canceled and not move to the spring

Miami Dolphins 2021 plans will be affected by NCAA football season cancellations.

When the Miami Dolphins begin their 2021 NFL Draft preparation, they may be doing so while actually watching NCAA football games.

I know, that doesn’t make a ton of sense. When Jeff Ireland was the Miami Dolphins general manager, he would often speak about the travel he would undertake throughout the season’s weekends to watch college kids. That is something that was and is traditionally done throughout the year.

It will be a little easier for GM’s this year if the NCAA goes through with their plans to cancel fall sports. Most notably the Big 10 conference has already done just that or at least taken a vote to move forward with the plans.

The idea for many conferences right now is to cancel the fall sports and move them to the spring. The question is when actually, is spring?

There are a lot of reasons why this is a horrible idea and frankly, the NCAA needs to just cancel the entire 2020 season instead.

Understand that the NCAA doesn’t care what the NFL timeline is. The Miami Dolphins may have two first-round and two second-round draft picks in 2021 but that doesn’t matter to the NCAA, what does matter is the money that the schools are losing by not having a football season.

Naturally, rescheduling the season for the spring makes sense for the NCAA but it shouldn’t. If college football begins in February, we are talking about a two month season even if it is scaled down. That takes players close to year-end finals. That’s problem one.

Problem two is that many of these players are not going to be entering the NFL draft and instead will be returning to college for another year. Instead of the NCAA season ending in mid-January with the NCAA Championship game, it may now end closer to the end of May. The problem? Most colleges return to the practice field in mid-July.

Regardless of what anyone thinks or believes, football players need recovery time. It is not like the NBA where the off-season can be used to play in other leagues, or with the MLB where many players will do the same. Football is different. Already some complain that the January to July break isn’t long enough. How about a May to July break?

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Forget about problem three and that is for the players who will enter the draft. They literally may still be playing football when the NFL Draft is supposed to begin. Now, the NFL will almost assuredly have to change the date to after the season. That window could now be late May or June which would force NFL teams to change most of their off-season work schedules.

Again, this isn’t about players and the NFL Draft. The NFL has moved the event before and last year managed to pull off one of their best-televised drafts in history, from the comfort of everyone’s home. Moving it to May is perfectly fine.

It is easy to sit here and tell the NCAA what they should do but it’s not my money and I’m not losing anything more than a casual viewing on Saturdays when a big game is on. Still, I think that given the intentions of moving to the spring will create bigger problems and the foremost is the health of the players and their recovery.

The NCAA should not be considering a spring start but instead maybe a delayed start or an entire cancellation. This is not going to work. In my opinion.