How would a Spring College Football season impact the 2021 NFL Draft?
Yahoo Sports' Charles Robinson and Terez Paylor discuss how a Spring College Football Season would impact the 2021 NFL Draft process. Subscribe to the Yahoo Sports NFL Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Video Transcript
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TEREZ PAYLOR: If they do end up playing college football in the spring-- who knows if that happens? But if they do, boy, it's hard to ask some players to play in the spring, do OTAs, and then play in the fall. I also think it's tough to have a draft in the middle of, like, a college football season. So like, what we know is that the CBA gives the league the right to move to draft to, like, June 2. They can do it.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah.
TEREZ PAYLOR: Would they do it? From a functionality standpoint, might it be better on June 2? I don't know. What do you think?
CHARLES ROBINSON: If-- it just comes down to, are you willing to do what's best for your teams? And-- and it's weird, because you would think, like, why don't they just have their own collective interests in mind here and move it? Like, this is stupid. Like, you're-- you're-- you are preventing yourself from, you know, putting-- being in the cauldron here, you know, of-- of a soup of bad decisions and a soup of possible mistakes.
If I'm the league, if I'm the owners, and particularly if I'm general managers and head coaches, I'm going to the-- to the owners. And I'm saying, look, please, please, please, please, let's broach this now. Let's move this. Let's figure it out, move it to June. In reality, I know we bring the kids in in April, or after April, into May, for the rookie minis, and then the full squad, and all that.
But look, how much do those guys really learn? I mean, they start the process. But how many times do you and I go to training camp in past seasons, and all we hear is, oh, their heads are swimming? The rookies are swimming. They don't-- they're overloaded. They don't know anything. They're-- it's-- that's not going to be any different. You trim a couple of months of preparation in the offseason, them having a playbook and studying it. But the procurement of talent might at least be a better crapshoot than, hey, let's just take these guys and hope for the best.
I don't think-- it doesn't make any sense to me why you would continue to keep it on time if it can help you-- this isn't like this draft we just had. They had a whole-- you know, they had 2019 tape. They had 2018, 20-- you know, they had all this to work on. . This is a completely different situation. So you-- you really should adjust to it.
But as you said, it's like, sometimes, I feel like the NFL is not great at the pivot, not great at the, hey, let's figure this out and pivot. Although this offseason and this pre-season, this training camp, they've shown the ability to get things together in a manner that they need. So you know, maybe-- maybe this is a continuation of that. Maybe they will move it.
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