Although the decision eventually may be made for them, some of the nation’s top college football prospects could be planning to ditch the 2020 season and focus on the 2021 draft.
“If this [pandemic] really continues down the path that I think it’s going down, there is a very likely chance that there’s going to be some high-profile kids signing with agents in the next 60 days,” an unnamed NFL agent told Ben Standig of TheAthletic.com.
Signing with agents would end their eligibility to play college football.
“They’re gonna bail,” another unnamed agent told Standig. “I mean, I’m recruiting some high-end kids. I talked to probably four of them last night, and they all echoed the same thing. Like, they’re done. This is over.”
The reality is that college football may be over before any player decides to end his college football career. The decision by multiple conferences to play only conference games feels less like a viable plan and more like the “bargaining” phase of the five stages.
Moving college football to the spring will only exacerbate the exodus, especially since the NFL isn’t inclined to move the draft from April.
For top prospects, missing the season won’t matter. The problem is that players, fueled by the praise of friends, family, and agents, tends to overrate themselves, resulting in 80 or 90 guys genuinely believing they’ll be among the top 20 players selected.
All it may take is one major domino to fall. If, for example, Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence (pictured) or Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields say, “I’m out,” plenty could quickly follow.
Again, it may not matter. Given the unrestrained growth in infection rates fueled by people who refuse to take the situation seriously and their special-place-in-hell media enablers who shamelessly have been downplaying the situation from the get go, it’s becoming more and more obvious that it will be ridiculously expensive at best and impossible at worst to ensure that all major college programs can conduct the kind of testing and turnaround needed to prevent the kind of outbreaks that will stop college football season before it even starts.
In this regard, it feels like “acceptance” is a week or two away, at the latest.