College football teams who aren't playing games this fall will be allowed to hold up to 12 hours per week of team activities.
As part of a practice model approved Wednesday by the NCAA's Division I Council, football teams that don't play this fall and plan to play in the spring will allowed to be conduct up to five hours per week of non-contact on-field drills, while the rest of 12 hours can be used for strength and conditioning workouts, meetings and film review. Athletes will be required to have two days off per week, and no more than four hours of team activities can be held in one day.
The model serves as a hybrid between the normal in-season model that allows teams to hold up to 20 hours of team activities per week and the offseason model that limits teams to eight hours of team activities per week.
While Ohio State coach Ryan Day said last week that he would push for teams that are not playing this fall to still be allowed to conduct padded practices, the model approved by the Division I Council – which will go into effect Monday and run through Oct. 4 – will only allow teams that aren't playing to hold non-contact practices for now, with only helmets and spider pads allowed.
As the Big Ten moves toward playing a football season that would begin in January – Jeff Potrykus of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Tuesday that a schedule for the proposed winter season could be released within the next week – it's likely that padded practices would need to be allowed by early December at the latest for conference teams to have ample time to prepare for that season.
“We need to develop our young players,” Day said last week. “I’m worried about the game moving forward, if we’re not able to get these guys developed. Missed a whole spring, now we’ve missed a whole preseason, and these guys need to play some football.”
The Division I Council also made a formal recommendation on Wednesday to the Division I Board of Directors, which is scheduled to meet Friday, that would give all fall sports athletes an additional year of eligibility regardless of whether or not they play a full season in 2020-21.
