Doyle: Two Seasons In One Year Would Have Significant Challenges
Various proposals on how to play the next college football season have been talked about in recent weeks as sports leagues begin discussing start-up plans during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
The college football season has been one of particular interest, since there are questions about how many campuses will be open to students during the fall semester.
One proposal that has been floated is playing a spring college football season, beginning in February and ending in May, and then playing the normal 2021 schedule.
That wouldn't leave much rest time in between seasons, Iowa strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle said on Wednesday. And the lack of training time poses its own issues.
"I have no idea if that's going to be a possibility," Doyle said. "I'm not involved in those discussions. The concerns and the challenges are there. You miss a complete offseason, because you essentially play a season, which you need to recover from, and then get back into establishing a training mode before you then lineup and playing another season.
"The challenges would exist there when you're looking at 18-to-22-year-old athletes playing two full seasons in a very short window of time. That's concerning. Typically we play 12-13 games in a 12-month period. You want to double that."
That, Doyle said, would be a difficult challenge.
"Everything that comes along with doubling your season, you can count on doubling it all, other than the training," Doyle said. "So you want to pay twice as much and train half as much? Get ready. That would be a concern for somebody that's charged with trying to create the best atmosphere for athletes to play in a safe environment and go out and play the game of football. You want to cut the training in half and double the exposure to competition? I think there are certainly things to be considered."
