If you thought the 2020 offseason was wild, wait until you get a load of your 2021. Here are five key off-field things happening that will shape your college football life.
College Football Cavalcade: 5 Biggest Off-Field Things That Matter
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Sorry if this take sucks, it’s not my fault …
This is the one column that doesn’t return just about everyone on both sides of the ball.
If you thought the 2020 offseason was weird, just you wait for what you’re about to get in 2021.
Will we get spring ball again? Will we be able to plan on fans being in the stands? How will the protocols continue to work?
And – oh yeah – sorry to have to go here, but when it comes to mass gatherings, no one wants to spend the next seven months having to care about the words “soft target” unless it’s referencing some mediocre receiver.
This will likely be done again later on this offseason – yeah, that whole Name Image and Likeness thing just got conveniently blown off – but for now, here are 5 big off-field things this offseason that matter.
5. Oh you COVID, you …
You best believe that we’re getting a 2021 college football season that’s going to be much better than the 2020 version.
The offseason, though …
If college football was able to play last year when everyone was guessing about the right and wrong ways to do this, there’s no chance we’re not getting at least what we had last season …
But with fans.
It was ugly at times, it was unscrupulous, it was occasionally unseemly, and it was all totally hypocritical considering the bullmess that college administrator types and athletic directors pushed, but we got our college football.
Now all these colleges want to start making money again, and that means they’re going to want fans giving them their money. Oh yeah, and they’re also going to want regular schedules and contracted games they can rely on so they can start collecting that ticket revenue as soon as humanly possible.
The desperation for some semblance of normalcy is everything for college football programs, especially for coaches who live on routine, predictability, and … The Process. Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that everything snaps back right away.
Coaches want their spring ball back, they want to know what and who they’re dealing with, and they want to worry about football and not testing, protocols, and distancing. However, they might still have to still live with all of that and more for a little while longer.
Outside of a new sheriff in town up at the very top, it’s not like anything has changed or improved COVID-wise over the last few months. Maybe the vaccinations will trickle down to the fittest people in our country – 18-to-23-year-old athletes – at some point this summer, but will it happen by March?
Nah, but that doesn’t mean teams aren’t going to be practicing. It just might not be like normal again quite yet.
On the plus side, the predictions for a season aren’t dire, unlike they were last season. However, expect spring football to be weird to non-existent depending on the school.
And with that …
NEXT: Schedules are likely going to return to near-normal
4. Schedules are likely going to return to near-normal
College football might not snap back to 2019 right away, but unless there’s some mutated super-version sequel of the coronavirus, the schedules should be more like normal.
Conferences didn’t want to schedule a whole slew of non-conference games last season because of liability, protocols, and because the home sides didn’t really want to pay up if there weren’t any fans in the stands to generate revenue. This year, coming up with schedules will be a little easier, but they’re still going to be written in pencil.
Here’s the one key thing to remember – conferences don’t want to do the Conference Only schedule thing again.
You think the Mississippi States, Louisvilles and Purdues of the world want to bang their heads against the wall to hopefully get to .500? They’re going to want their non-conference games to fatten up the records, but that only matters if the fans are coming back.
So this offseason, 1) expect the schedules to be created as normal once the conferences figure out their own slates, while 2) the colleges will be far better prepared this time around to make sure the customers come through the door.
And then everyone will cross their fingers, which then means …
NEXT: Welcome back to high expectations for all coaches
3. Welcome back to high expectations for all coaches
It was one of those weird philosophical things that mattered in some places and not others.
The thought was that coaches were going to get a bit of a break in the COVID year. Cash-starved schools weren’t going to want to deal out the bad paper of a buyout, and there was also a thought that coaches were being asked to do the impossible just by fielding a team of healthy players.
It didn’t really work like that.
College football coaches don’t know squat about infectious diseases – or anything other than coaching football, actually – and yet many had no idea what they were dealing with personnel-wise week-in-and-week-out.
Even harder was the preparation.
How do you get ready for a team that might be missing 25 guys, but might not, and you don’t know which players they’d be, and it was a mess for the coaches.
You can’t blame – for example – Wisconsin’s Paul Chryst for a mediocre season when his team got lit up by the virus after Week 1. You shouldn’t have blamed, say, Gus Malzahn for a mediocre record when his team had to play an all-SEC schedule and didn’t get the normal non-conference warm-up games.
Chryst was and is more than secure, but Malzahn got whacked by Auburn just like 2020 was a normal college football season.
While some places – Penn State, Michigan, Kansas, Nebraska, Syracuse, Texas Tech – didn’t mess with a big coaching change despite disappointing-to-miserable campaigns, others – Illinois, Vanderbilt, Texas, South Carolina, Arizona – had no problem moving on.
This year, though, expect any and all grace periods to stop.
Coaches get fired when they don’t win, be even more when losing leads to a lack of ticket sales. No ticket sales, no revenue, no non-revenue sports, no bloated athletic departments.
Last year, obviously, ticket sales didn’t matter. They sure as shoot will this year, and if a coach isn’t winning and – assuming things are kinda sorta kosher again – there aren’t butts in seats, there will be a whole lot of changes being made.
And now to the interesting stuff …
NEXT: The insane transfer portal
2. The insane transfer portal
Now here’s where this gets really strange, and a lot of this depends on whether or not there’s spring football as normal to determine how the teams are shaping up.
You know that backup quarterback, dime package defensive back, and Johnny Four-Star receiver from the 2019 class that you’ve been waiting to see? Yeah … don’t worry about it, because he’s probably sucked into the transfer portal by the time you finish reading this sentence.
The NCAA rules on transferring haven’t been locked down and finalized for this year, but that hasn’t stopped players from transferring all across the board.
There’s a problem, though. There’s still a question of whether or not most-to-all of these players are going to be immediately eligible.
The transfer portal and the rules have always been murky. Some players have confused being a grad transfer – graduate, and you’re immediately eligible to play anywhere – and entering the portal, which simply means you’re transferring but without the guarantee of being able to play right away.
The NCAA is dragging its feet on whether or not everyone gets a one-time exemption because of the COVID year, or if players are going to get a penalty-free shot at transferring, or if things are going to stay as is.
In any event, the transfer portal has become the land of disgruntled non-employees looking to play elsewhere.
It used to be just the guys who sat on the bench but wanted a shot, but now a whole lot of recognizable names are moving around, too. And it’s only going to get crazier because …
NEXT: Seniors get another year of eligibility (if they want it)
1. Seniors get another year of eligibility (if they want it)
It’s the one big reason why the 2021 college football season might be totally amazing compared to the yuck of 2020 – besides that whole deadly pandemic thing …
Experience.
Because of the COVID restrictions of 2020, the NCAA has allowed every senior another year of eligibility. For the most part, many of the seniors who hope to have a shot at the NFL are taking off, but a whole lot of them aren’t.
Maybe it’s because they want to up their pro stock, or maybe it’s because they aren’t NFL players and now get another year of college football.
A whole lot of guys who went through the whole Senior Day thing are about to come back.
Who wants to go be a junior underling at Initech when you can live the fantasy life of a senior-plus college student playing football for a few more months?
For example, check out our ACC Pre-Spring Rankings and notice how it seems like everybody gets back everyone – or close to it.
That means a whole lot of teams are going to have ten starters back on offense, or the entire defensive back seven returning, or two 23-year-old offensive tackles with four years of experience.
If this all works, the quality of play should be a whole lot better just because coaches know what they’re dealing with, and they can fix glitches with transfers if needed. Combine that with the likelihood of teams not having to deal with losing players to COVID concerns by the time the season rolls around, and we’re about to get a really, really strong college football season.
We deserve it.
