No Surprise, NCAA Approves Six-Week Preseason Practice Plan

It'was a formality, but on Wednesday, but the approval came as expected.

As expected, the NCAA Division-I council voted on Wednesday to approve the six-week preseason practice plan for their member institutions to work towards the start of the 2020 college football season. 

Details of this plan have been in the news for weeks and have gone through the NCAA process to this final approval that could allow teams to begin summer workouts as soon as July 6, where the six-week plan of NFL style OTA's would begin the preparations for a season. 

Student-athletes around the country began returning to campuses late last month, with the Southeastern Conference setting the date of June 8 for athletes to begin voluntary on-campus workouts.

"This is the culmination of a significant amount of collaboration in our effort to find the best solution for Division I football institutions," Shane Lyons, the Division I council chair and director of athletics at West Virginia, said in a statement. "Our student-athletes, conference commissioners, coaches, and health and safety professionals helped mold the model we are proposing."

According to the release posted via the NCAA website, the following standards were set in this plan.

Under the proposed model, assuming a school's first scheduled football contest is on Saturday, Sept. 5, student-athletes may be required to participate in up to eight hours of weight training, conditioning and film review per week (not more than two hours of film review per week) from July 13-23.

Then, from July 24 through Aug. 6, student-athletes may be required to participate in up to 20 hours of countable athletically related activities per week (not more than four hours per day) as follows:

• Up to eight hours per week for weight training and conditioning.
• Up to six hours per week for walk-throughs, which may include the use of a football.
• Up to six hours per week for meetings, which may include film review, team meetings, position meetings, one-on-one meetings, etc.

During this 14-day period, student-athletes are required to get at least two days off. 

Student-athletes at Vanderbilt returned to campus and were allowed to begin voluntary workouts on June 8 under the strict policies the university has adopted in their four-phases to reopening the school to pre-pandemic form. 

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