College Football: 3 local players potentially impacted by a spring delay

If college football is forced to move back to the spring of 2021, local programs could be impacted. Who could be hurt the most by this move?

As various states continue to make changes to their fall sports schedule in dealing with the COVID-19 impact, various states have moved their sports to the winter and spring semesters.

California and Illinois amongst them have move sports back. Thus far, the local states of Kansas and Missouri have not made any significant changes.

College football has begun to make changes, as the ACC conference recently announced a revised schedule to go along with the PAC12 and BigTen in doing conference only games.

However, in the event college football must take the drastic step in moving football to the spring, it will have long lasting implications. And not just financial. Assuming college would football would play the 2021 schedule as normal, teams would play in the spring and then turn right around and play in the football.

And while the top draft prospects would likely not play due to hampering their draft stock, what about the players that are looking towards the 2022 draft? If they get injured in a delayed 2020 season, that could impact their availability in a 2021 season, and their draft prospects would be all but gone because of a injury but two impacted ‘seasons.’

With that in mind, I take a look at a player on each local school roster that could make the decision to ‘opt out’ of a spring 2020 season, to either enter the NFL draft or with the anticipation of returning when life returns (as best as possible) to normal for the regularly scheduled 2021 season.