Ryan Day provides details on what a spring football season would look like (and it’s weird)
By John Buhler
![Ryan Day, Ohio State Buckeyes. (Photo by Quinn Harris/Getty Images) Ryan Day, Ohio State Buckeyes. (Photo by Quinn Harris/Getty Images)](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/shape/cover/sport/de8d77d5e4b796d7bc10b0d152394e9629347f24eee64c1de9c95d03a7ce1899.jpg)
Ryan Day provides proof spring college football is as weird as it sounds.
Ohio State football coach Ryan Day and the rest of the Big Ten college football coaches are planning to play this spring.
With the Big Ten postponing the college football season until the spring, the 14 head coaches in this Power 5 are faced with trying to play two seasons within six months of each other. Having spring football practice is one thing, but playing a college football season in the spring makes next to no sense. Day has given us even more reason to question a spring football season’s viability.
Per ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg, “Ryan Day offering a lot of specifics on what he’d like to see with spring schedule: Start in January, eight-week season with a postseason, allowing mid-year enrollees to be eligible. Says it would be a recruiting incentive for those players.”
Ryan Day offering a lot of specifics on what he'd like to see with spring schedule: Start in January, eight-week season with postseason, allowing mid-year enrollees to be eligible. Says it would be a recruiting incentive for those players.
— Adam Rittenberg (@ESPNRittenberg) August 12, 2020
There is so much to unpack here with Ryan Day’s spring football comments.
First, let’s start with starting in January. You know what January is like in Big Ten country? Absolutely freezing and there’s a ton of snow. All 14 Big Ten schools play in outdoor stadiums. Who honestly thinks student-athletes are going to play in sub-zero temperatures in February in places like Madison, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Evanston, Illinois? That sounds brutal. Or would they play inside the team’s indoor practice facilities?
Second, what’s the point of an eight-week season with a postseason? Let’s play two-thirds of a normal regular season in the elements and then have a postseason extending into what should be recovery time for every team’s players to get ready for the fall. If that is not a major disadvantage when it comes to keeping pace with the Power 5 conferences that plan on playing, what is?
And lastly, using the spring football window to all mid-year enrollees to play right away is embarrassing. Sure, come up to Big Ten country and use a year of eligibility that should have been used in the fall to play an eight-week season with a postseason in sub-zero temperatures. What pro-style quarterback is going to want to throw a football throw the middle of a freaking blizzard?
This is madness and only madness. While we will have to respect the Big Ten and Pac-12’s decision to punt on playing in the fall, you will have a better chance of building an igloo out of snow that falls from the sky down in Key West, Florida than you will of being able to pull off a spring football season. Spring practice is a great idea, but playing games in the spring is moronic.
It’s hard to tell good from great, but when something is bad, it’s obvious, just like spring football.
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