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I believe it is possible.
There was 200 days between the 2018-2019 National Championship on January 7th and when the teams that played Week 0 games this year reported to camp on July 26th. So that’s the number we want to shoot for. Let’s get there. https://twitter.com/elmontejohnny/status/1283077146169102337
There was 200 days between the 2018-2019 National Championship on January 7th and when the teams that played Week 0 games this year reported to camp on July 26th. So that’s the number we want to shoot for. Let’s get there. https://twitter.com/elmontejohnny/status/1283077146169102337
If we had a full season with conference titles, reduced each team to only one bye, and had no bowl games other than the playoffs starting with a 3 week camp that began on January 2nd, that would cause the season to end on April 10th for most teams, with the title game on May 1st.
With 15 days of spring ball practice canceled that eat into your rest time in a typical year, you can subtract that out from our 200 starting number to get to 185.
185 days from April 10th (teams that make playoffs have to make a couple weeks of concessions here) takes us to Tuesday October 12th 2021, which if everyone opens camp the weekend before that, means we could start games as early as October 30th keeping the same 3 week camp model.
All of that timeline is possible while keeping the EXACT same rest between seasons for 88% of teams, and keeping non-conference schedules completely in tact.
Another interesting angle is how much of a gap is really needed? Matthew Kutz, PhD at the Bowling Green School of Human Movement had some of the closest analysis of this I could find, in his 2009 paper “Contributing Factors to Overtraining in the Adolescent Multi-Season Athlete”.
Kutz cites 25 different studies in his paper and boils them down to a pretty simple takeaway:
The highest risk to multiple season athletes is sudden upticks in training load within season overlap, not the length of rest between seasons.
The highest risk to multiple season athletes is sudden upticks in training load within season overlap, not the length of rest between seasons.
Would love to see any other studies that look at decreased off-seasons in sports and how that effects athletes, because if you can work down to even 90% of the existing gap time (with player safety being priority) you get some compelling season start dates very close to normal.
And for those that think October is too late to start a fall season, do you realize that the conference only 2020 schedules being discussed all would likely start in October?
There is drag to the end of the college football season anyways, and it would be doable to tighten everything up in Bowl season and return to normal after a 2021 October start.
So yes, I believe this is very possible. It just takes time and planning with the NFL, college conferences, venues, sponsors, and recruits. But we can’t wait forever to get the ball rolling!
