Colonial Athletic Association Commissioner Joe D’Antonio said if the league is going to have a football season in the spring, there are hurdles to overcome.
The University of Maine is one of 12 teams in the CAA, one of the Football Championship Subdivision’s best leagues.
The CAA pushed back its football season to the spring from the fall on July 19 due the COVID-19 pandemic.
The NCAA announced that playoffs in the FCS in the fall have been canceled because of the number of leagues and teams that had already canceled their fall seasons. But they could be moved to the spring.
“The first hurdle is to make sure the country is in a different place than it is now,” D’Antonio said. “That either means having a vaccine or making significant inroads in testing so that it is much less expensive and much more reliable and available.”
D’Antonio said he is waiting to hear what the NCAA says about moving the Football Bowl Subdivision season and the playoffs to the spring which, in turn, could dictate what the FCS will do.
Speculation is mounting that the NCAA will pull the plug on the FBS’ fall season and move it to the spring since the Big Ten, Pac-12, Mountain West and Mid-American conferences have already opted out, as have schools such as the University of Connecticut and Old Dominion.
“Once we have a further directive from the NCAA, that will allow us as a conference to put our plans and initiatives into place,” D’Antonio said.
The CAA already has a host of contingency plans for next spring, including regionalizing their conference schedule to reduce travel.
That could mean that UMaine would strictly play CAA teams in the northeast like New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Stony Brook, Albany and either Villanova or Delaware. The other teams are Virginia-based William and Mary, Richmond and James Madison, along with Towson from Baltimore, Maryland, and Elon from North Carolina.
It’s also possible that teams could play each other twice like UMaine and the University of New Hampshire.
UMaine head football coach Nick Charlton said if it can be done safely, his team will be ready for any type of scenario.
“We will play whoever and wherever they want us to play them,” said Charlton, who anticipates a regionalized schedule. “Our guys want to play. They want there to be a championship game of some sort.”
UMaine’s fall CAA schedule had included games at Richmond, James Madison, the University of Rhode Island and Stony Brook, along with home games against Delaware, Villanova, Albany and New Hampshire.
But D’Antonio said that the CAA still needs the NCAA to approve the possibility of playing in the spring and then being able to overcome that first hurdle he previously mentioned.
University of Maine athletic director Ken Ralph pointed out that football relies on its offseason more than any other sport, so he wondered how a spring season would impact a quick turnaround for a regular fall season.
He questioned if the players would have enough time to bounce back.
He said that could result in more injuries and could also mean that a player who suffers a serious injury in the spring could miss two seasons if they turned right around and had a fall season.
“How do we best accommodate our student-athletes to give them the best possible experience?” Ralph said. “We have to make sure we prepare the team for long-term success. We don’t want to mortgage the future on the present. We have to be careful.”
He said one of the positives of the current situation is it gives the coaches time to connect with student-athletes.
“This will give [student-athletes] the chance to make more individual development gains,” Ralph said. “It’s kind of exciting that there are going to be new ways to approach things.”