There are many questions concerning the feasibility of a winter/spring football season, but the one that appears to loom largest in James Franklin’s mind is whether such a season could be staged in a way that wouldn’t hinder Big Ten teams in the fall of 2021 and beyond.

In a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning, Franklin said that he doesn’t envision the conference backtracking on its decision to scrap the fall season and thinks that a spring campaign will be possible. But, he added, any plan for playing football early next year should seek to avoid handicapping Big Ten teams heading into the following season.

“I think with everything we decide, we have to think about how we get back to what we would consider normal for the ’21 season,” he said. "Whatever decisions we make now, we’ve got to make sure they don’t impact us moving forward. Whether that’s a spring season or whether it’s a winter season, I think we have to look at that. There have been a lot of discussions going on about that and a lot of different models being proposed. From my perspective, we have to make sure that if we go with a model, that model has [to have] the least amount of impact moving forward. I’m open to playing… as long as we can do it in a way that keeps our student-athletes safe and healthy and protected.

“That’s what was frustrating when we got shut down,” Franklin added. “We basically just got done practicing for a week, and when we tested our entire organization – coaches, players, trainers, everybody who comes in contact with our team – we didn’t have one positive. You’re working so hard to make something work, and you’re showing that you can make it work, at least on our campus, then the decision is made to cancel. I’m open to playing as long as we keep our guys – and not just our guys, but the teams that we’re playing – safe. If we can find a way to do that, and there are some models that I’ve been very vocal about, then hopefully we can make it work.”

Franklin said that he would like to see the winter/spring season start as early as possible. His Ohio State counterpart, Ryan Day, said last week that he wanted the season to begin in January and end before the NFL Draft, which is currently set to take place April 29-May 1. Franklin didn’t target a specific date to open the season, but he said he doesn’t want it extending so far into the spring that it would interfere with preparations for the 2021 campaign.

“I think it needs to be more of a winter season than a spring season,” he said. “The later you go into the year, that’s going to start to impact the following season. It’s going to have an impact in terms of too many games in too short a period of time, in terms of injuries [and providing] enough time for guys to get healthy for injury prevention, for the right amount of training that we have to do beforehand to be ready to compete. How are you going to handle incoming recruits? How are you going to handle rosters? How many guys are going end up playing? How many guys aren’t going to end up playing based on opting out? Is the NFL going to move back the combine and the draft, which they have the ability to do based on the collective bargaining agreement? Those conversations are happening as well. All of these things have got to be tied together to make it work effectively and efficiently for as many as possible.”

To help facilitate a winter season, Franklin said he would like to see the Big Ten investigate the possibility of playing in domes. He had previously floated the idea of using domed NFL stadiums in Indianapolis, Detroit and Minneapolis, and he still supports that concept, noting that it would help with TV coverage to have crews stationed in centralized locations rather than traveling throughout the Midwest during the harshest months of the year. “Domes provide an opportunity for consistency from a weather standpoint,” he said.

The Power Five conferences have been fractured since last week, with the SEC, ACC and Big 12 continuing to prepare for a fall season, and the Big Ten and Pac-12 opting to try again in the winter or spring. Franklin said that the decision to postpone is going to have a wide range of consequences both on and off the field.

“This decision isn’t just [about] playing in the fall,” he said. “It’s going to impact a lot of different things. It will impact recruiting. If we’re playing and they’re out recruiting, that’s going to have an impact – a long-term impact. If we have our rosters at over 85 and they have their rosters at only 85, that’s going to have an impact. … We’re only going to get 12 hours [per week] to work with our team when everyone else is practicing. I think right now, if you look at certain teams that we’re competing with nationally, they’ve gotten 20 more practice opportunities right now when you count spring ball and the summer than we’ve had.

“So it’s going to have much more of an impact than just not playing this fall. How quickly can we get back to normal operations? The decisions we make have to be [about] not just the impact on the short term, but how can we limit the impact of the long term? That’s where coaches are very valuable in this process. Coaches are always thinking like that. That’s where we help in the decision-making process, to understand what we’re doing and the true impact of it. It’s not as simple as maybe some people think, that it’s just going to impact this fall.”

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