Sports Column | Todd Hefferman: Drag FCS football and me to the spring

I wanted it so badly, too, America.

The Major League Baseball teams were throwing with their masks on, and there were NBA players running up and down the court. There was Jon Rahm and Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, and Jack Nicklaus, on a golf course, on live television, at the Memorial Tournament in Dublin, Ohio. The NFL Players Association cleared the way for training camps.

But college football is just not going to happen. At least not this fall. And it shouldn't happen.

I caught some video of Illinois State working out at Hancock Stadium, but get ready for spring ball, Redbirds. College football, at least at the FCS, Division II and Division III levels, is just not in the creative cards. The NCAA Board of Governors and Mark Emmert can kick the can even further, after they declined to give any of us any direction for the fall on Friday, but there is only one answer in light of student-athlete safety.

Push football to the spring. The Ivy League, Patriot League, MEAC, SWAC and the CAA have already called it a fall. James Madison and Elon have expressed a desire to play outside of the league, but that's only to pursue the playoffs. How many players do they think they'll have for Week 12, under these circumstances? It's time, sadly, to start accepting the risks of playing this fall instead of trying to figure out how.

More than a dozen FBS programs have already delayed workouts because of positive tests for COVID-19. They haven't started playing games yet, and that's before the student body returns in a few weeks. Several programs — heck, all of them — have discussed playing games without fans. If we're not willing to put fans in the stands, six feet apart, where they will just sit and watch, and occasionally get in line for the bathroom and the concession stand, how can we expect 22 players colliding with each other at high speeds 50-100 times a game to be any safer?

Consider this:

• If a Saluki develops symptoms of the coronavirus when the team is at Youngstown State, does he have to stay in his hotel room in Ohio for several days? How does he not infect the entire team on the flight back? If a member of the athletic training staff, or the coaching staff, drive him back, how does he or she protect himself or herself?

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• College athletes that play the same position typically live together. When one comes down with symptoms, the whole house will have to quarantine for two weeks. The position coach and his teammates that practiced next to him probably have to, as well. Yes, almost all of SIU's players have played more than one position, but depth was always an issue at the FCS level before this.

Can most college athletes play more than one position? Sure. Can they play them well? That will be a challenge, at the last minute, even for Division I players.

• Division II and Division III teams may not be able to afford the projected $100,000 price tag to test their athletes 72 hours before every game, which the NCAA has recommended. After losing a $500,000 payday from Wisconsin, and another $500,000 from the NCAA Tournament getting canceled, is that worth the money at SIU? Even with the Kansas game, which will pay the Salukis $300,000 if they get to compete in late August, SIU will have to consider its other sports and what it might cost to bring back all the seniors that want to play another season next spring.

• There are promising leads for a possible vaccine in this country and the United Kingdom, but there is no cure for the coronavirus. Our doctors, some of the smartest on the planet, don't fully understand how it hits different patients and what long-term problems it may include.

• Spring football, for a year, might be great. Just this once, teams could get some additional practices (the NCAA only allows 15 for spring ball in a normal year), they concentrate on their academics this semester, and hope things are different in seven months. Bucky Dent, Braden Fogal and myself have never tried to be two places at once, but if SIU hosts a football game, baseball game and softball doubleheader all on the same Saturday in March, we'll do our best.

SIU would still get to play this school year. It will be very difficult for its sports information department, video services and the administration to try to staff all those games at the same time, but nobody said it would be easy. I don't want the alternative, which is not playing at all.

There are no easy answers to our predicament. I want sports, too, folks. I want to wear my mask, drive to Saluki Stadium, sit as far away from people as I can in the press box, and watch what could be one of SIU's best teams in over a decade. You'll have to drag FCS football and me to 2021 kicking and screaming, but it must be done for the sake of the athletes.