FCS Spring Season called off due to pandemic; check it out
VERMILLION, S.D. — Call it off.
It isn’t working. The season is becoming a mishmash of postponements and cancellations. And in the case of Illinois State, ending the season completely. Surprisingly, The Football Championship Subdivison gave it the old college try this spring, attempting to cobble together a shortened season with a rough playoffs in the name of giving athletes a chance to compete. So call off the FCS season, re-group and get ready for next fall when vaccinations have taken hold and the pandemic is mostly in the rearview mirror.
“There’s been some great things about playing in the spring. I think our league has really done a good job up until this week and now we got two games that were postponed this week,” Nielson said. “We all entered into this with the idea that you want to give your guys the opportunity to play football, (but) you also want to make sure you don’t impact the fall of 2021 because I’m very optimistic the fall of 2021 is going to be normal.”
Due to Covid issues, NDSU and South Dakota canceled their game at the DakotaDome on Saturday in the Bison program. It will not be made up because the Coyotes already had a game against Western Illinois postponed and their open date is filled with the Leathernecks.
What’s going against many players is “What seemed like a good idea at the time” — giving athletes and teams the hope of playing a football season after the fall schedule was mostly postponed — is turning out to be messier the longer the spring drags on.
The NCAA could solve this problem with one press release. All it would have to say is that the FCS playoffs and national championship game are called off because of pandemic concerns. Poof. Every FCS program would end its season the next day, if not the same day.
It’s a simple solution. If there wasn’t a title and a trophy on the line, there would be little reason to play. Especially for the top teams like NDSU, James Madison and South Dakota State.
One trouble in football is the machismo involved. The top programs will never say they want to stop the season. That would be seen as weak and would be used as a hammer against them in recruiting. It happened when Illinois State elected to pull the plug last week. There was plenty of social media backlash against the Redbirds and head coach Brock Spack, even from within Missouri Valley Football Conference.
