According to a tweet last night from Brett McMurphy, the NCAA Oversight Committee has made a suggestion on the practice period for college football programs before returning to play games.
McMurphy shares that a six-week period is the recommendation, and that will have to go to the NCAA COVID-19 Advisory panel for approval. The thumbs up from them could come as soon as later this week, he points out.
The college football season is slated to start on August 29th with a total of seven games to kick off what has surely become one of the most anticipated sports seasons in recent memory after the COVID pandemic brought a screeching halt to the NCAA men's and women's basketball post season tournaments dand cancelled NBA and MLB seasons, as well as spring sports for college athletics, not to mention spring ball and off season work for college football programs as campuses around the country closed.
The recommended six-week timeline means student athletes playing that opening weekend (12 FBS teams in total including Marshall, ECU, Cal, UNLV, NM State, UCLA, Nevada, Hawaii, Arizona, and New Mexico) would need to report about July 20th in order to get their six-week training and acclimation period in. The rest of the 118 FBS teams would report the following week (the 27th of July) in order to play between September 3rd and 7th.
Since the pandemic has put the fall season in limbo, college football coaches across the country have requested having anywhere between four weeks and ten weeks in order to feel like they'll be able to safely return to play. Coaches and programs at the Division III level have long been given four weeks to prepare for play, as Matt Campbell shed light on a few weeks ago.
No spring ball and just six weeks to prepare is going to be a really unique challenge for the new staffs in college football, including teams like Arkansas, Michigan State, Baylor, Florida State, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Rutgers, and Washington State.
The start of the traditional college football season as we know it is about five months away, so it's really near-impossible to predict what each state's situation is going to look like that far down the road. In the meantime, there seems to be no shortage of creative ideas being kicked around as to what a non-traditional college football season may look like.
Head here to read the full piece from McMurphy.
Meanwhile, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.