The Football Championship Subdivision gave it the old college try this spring, attempting to cobble together a shortened season with a truncated playoffs in the name of giving athletes a chance to compete (and in a handful of cases, including North Dakota State, trying to make a few bucks).
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.
So call off the FCS season, regroup and get ready for next fall when vaccinations have taken hold and the pandemic is mostly in the rearview mirror.
Should the rest of the FCS football spring season be cancelled?
Thank you for voting!
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Yes
54%
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No
46%
NDSU and South Dakota canceled their game at the DakotaDome on Saturday because of COVID-19 issues 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 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.
You might think the call to end the season is spurred because NDSU was nicked by the pandemic. You would be wrong. I am on record as being skeptical of the spring season and have already said there will be an unofficial asterisk attached to it.
Admittedly, calling off the season appears to not be a popular view.
Bison athletic director Matt Larsen said he's in favor of continuing.
"In totality, there's a lot more games being played than not," he said.
I asked USD coach Bob Nielson on Saturday whether he believes the season should be canned. He didn't say "yes," but didn't exactly say "no."
"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."
Coyotes athletic director David Herbster was much stronger in his support of continuing the season, with the acknowledgement that he might quickly change his mind.
"I still think it's time to play," Herbster said. "We're going to have these bumps and these challenges. Across FCS, what's the percentage of games that have been canceled? I think we're still in position where we have to try."
What Herbster said next, though, is the major "but" to his stance.
"Things that happen like today, you really reflect and say, 'What are we doing? Why are we doing this?' My tune might change in a week or two weeks, because it's not only COVID we're dealing with, but it's also going to be injuries. You can pretty quickly get an entire position group decimated," he said.
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 the Missouri Valley Football Conference.
I've consistently said that if you injected truth serum into FCS coaches, most would say they didn't want to play the spring season. I believe if you injected the same serum into their arms right now, most would be OK with ending the season and focusing on the fall.
But with the NCAA unwilling to cancel the playoffs, the programs and their coaches are trapped. They have to push ahead, even if they cringe doing so.
Do the right thing, NCAA. Pull the plug. It's time to end the FCS spring season.
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March 28, 2021 at 12:26AM
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McFeely: Time to call off the spring FCS season | INFORUM - INFORUM
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