How Deion Sanders’ proposal helps solve one of college football’s biggest problems
Colorado produced two big ideas this spring — one a stroke of genius, the other a source of ridicule.
Retiring quarterback Shedeur Sanders’ number Saturday at the spring scrimmage reflects nepotism run amok, the lack of saner heads in Boulder and an affront to decades of CU greats who have never been comparably honored.
Replacing the traditional intra-squad scrimmage with an exhibition game, on the other hand, constitutes a great leap forward within an industry known for progress on an incremental scale.
Understandably, the NCAA rejected CU’s request to hold joint practices with Syracuse and face the Orange in an exhibition game at Folsom Field. The Football Oversight Committee based its decision on the last-minute timing, potential recruiting advantages for the schools involved and, comically, any potential academic disruption.
But coach Deion Sanders’ idea to open spring to inter-conference competition, modeled after the joint practice sessions held in the NFL, offers a gateway to unlocking one of the vexing issues facing college football: a competition calendar that no longer makes sense.
Adjusting the entrenched rules governing spring practices could lead to needed changes in the summer, fall and, most importantly, winter.
As the College Football Playoff grows in participants, the calendar expands deeper into January — the title game for the 2026 season will be played on Jan. 25, 2027, for example — and thus collides with the final weeks of the NFL regular season and the heart of the playoffs. That’s a losing proposition for college football and the industry’s ATMs (ESPN and Fox).
The sport would be better off rolling its competition schedule back and finishing with the national championship on Jan. 1 in the Rose Bowl. The postseason remake can be achieved without downsizing the 12-team CFP, but there are several complications.
Unraveling the Gordian knot starts with overhauling the spring schedule.
Although the committee didn’t cite injuries as a primary reason for rejecting Sanders’ bold idea, player safety is an ever-present concern for the committee, according to an industry source.
For Colorado and Syracuse to hold weeks of traditional spring practices on their respective campuses, then stage a multi-day joint session, then play an exhibition game undoubtedly raised alarms within the committee. If anything, the committee would prefer to reduce the amount of physicality in the spring sessions.
That can be accomplished while staying true to Sanders’ original idea.
It starts with eliminating the month-long spring practice sessions entirely. Instead, the NCAA should follow the NFL model and conduct a series of Organized Team Activities (OTAs), which are essentially practices without contact.
Let the schools hold multi-day OTAs in both March and April with the flexibility to have joint practices against opposing teams. Give the players a break in May, then allow a week-long OTA session in June with partial contact (i.e., helmets and shoulder pads).
That should prepare the players physically for the next stage in the calendar overhaul: Start training camp in late July, instead of early August, and cut the duration from four weeks to three.
(The committee should be receptive to the idea, especially considering a 2021 study, reported by the New York Times, that indicated concussion risk is higher in practices than games — and that training camp contributed to an outsized portion of the concussions.)
By starting training camp earlier and condensing the timeframe, college football could move the regular season to what is currently referred to as Week 0, the Saturday before Labor Day weekend, when only a handful of games are played.
That one-week change would move the conference championship games to late November. But it wouldn’t create enough space to roll the national title back to Jan. 1. Either a second week must be cut or the postseason schedule needs to be condensed. (Last season, the CFP spanned 32 days, from Dec. 20-Jan. 20.)
It’s tricky, and there’s a far better chance the sport is unable to move the title game all the way to Jan. 1. But even the second week in January would be preferable to finishing in the second half of the month.
The NFL is expected to eventually expand the regular season to 18 games, which would create more ratings competition — and fewer broadcast windows — for the current version of the CFP.
Far better to avoid the gorilla than stand in its way.
That process begins not with the CFP itself but with the spring calendar. The NCAA rejected the specifics of Sanders’ proposal, but it should fully embrace the concept.
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