SPOKANE, Washington – Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, college coaches were faced with uniquely arduous and convoluted issues, and almost all of them approached them in distinctive ways.
Portland State head coach Bruce Barnum recalled a phone call he received from his counterpart at Weber State, Jay Hill, who was lamenting a limited allowance of players on a practice field at one time.
“Jay,” Barnum remembered saying, “my team’s at home.”
Portland State wasn’t practicing at all, and Hill was shocked. These coaches were all thrown off a rhythm. In the Big Sky, this has culminated in schools around the conference moving forward with their own sets of complex advantageous and disadvantages.
Montana State elected not to play at all during the spring. That decision was before previous head coach Jeff Choate departed to become a co-defensive coordinator at Texas.
This provided ample time for his replacement, Brent Vigen, to establish his own playbook while acclimating to returning members of the program.
“We’re healthy physically,” he said. “We’re healthy mentally. We’re hungry.”
Vigen added he’s content knowing he doesn’t have to consider the consequences of a spring season mere months before the Bobcats kick off the fall on Sept. 4 at Wyoming.
“Everybody is out there starting in the next couple weeks and starting in the first week of September,” Vigen said. “That’s all that matters, is what we all have moving forward as opposed to what happened in the last 16, 17, 18 months. Each team took the approach to do what was best for them and … what we did was best for us. And that’s all we can worry about.
“We’ll all move forward. We’ll all get our clean slate of games and let it be settled on the field.”
MSU defensive end Amandre Williams believes his teammates needed the spring to develop their skills and identity during practices with the new staff coming in. He’s also optimistic about the overall health of the Bobcats.
Injuries, or the lack thereof, was a major point of emphasis at the Big Sky Football Kickoff on Monday for all teams regardless of the number of contests they played in the spring. MSU offensive lineman Lewis Kidd said the spring was a carved out window for the Bobcats to emphasize weight training and conditioning so they’re fully prepared for the fall slate.
“It takes a long time to recover from a season of football,” Kidd said. “There’s an advantage there.”
UC Davis was 3-2 during the spring season, which was postponed from 2020 and shortened. Aggies head coach Dan Hawkins told the Chronicle the FCS playoff committee called his team multiple times with an offer to continue into the postseason, but UC Davis declined.
Hawkins felt his players had participated in too many games if they were to be fully ready for the fall. This fall was always the priority. Hawkins said this year’s squad will be “the best UC Davis football team in the history of UC Davis. There’s no question about that.”
“Sometimes you have to be the adult in the room,” he said, “and I thought it was great for their mental health to have some normalcy in the spring, but also understanding what looms in the fall and what that takes.”
Hawkins noted a few players are nicked up but believes none will miss significant time. He lauded his strength and conditioning staff for contributing to that result.
“To be a heavyweight boxer,” Hawkins said, “you have to be able to trade blows in the 12th round or you’re not going to make it.”
And now, the Aggies feel they’re faster and stronger because of the spring season. They accomplished what they sought to during the spring, UC Davis offensive lineman Connor Pettek said. If his teammates were feeling beaten up or if injuries had sidelined several players, he admitted he might have changed his mindset.
“I feel like I’m ready for this fall season,” Aggies defensive back Jordan Perryman said. “The spring I saw as an opportunity to get better. So we all went out there, competed a little bit and it’s not like we wasted time out there. I feel like we’ll be ready.”
Barnum said Portland State, which jointly announced it wasn’t playing a full spring schedule with MSU and Montana in January, wasn’t given much of an option to play because of Oregon’s COVID-19 rules.
When players did report back three weeks ahead of the first scheduled spring game, Barnum estimated two thirds of them “weren’t even close” to being ready, in the opinion of the team’s trainers, doctors and coaches.
“No fault of theirs, with that absence, it was hard to keep track of them,” Barnum said.
The Vikings played one game last spring, a 48-7 defeat at Montana in April. Portland State quarterback Davis Alexander felt this was the right course of action because it allowed his team to measure itself against a top-notch opponent while avoiding the workload of a full schedule.
In considering so many potential games within a short time span, Northern Arizona’s coaches studied further ways to optimize recovery. They taught players about hydration, sleep and nutrition tactics which would optimize the work they did.
The Lumberjacks ended 3-2, accomplishing feats like winning back-to-back games and a road contest which they hadn’t in some time. Head coach Chris Ball pointed to that as proof competing in the spring was worthwhile.
NAU linebacker Tristen Vance added the spring gave freshmen “a free season” to learn and gain critical confidence while going up against some of the best the conference has to offer.
“It gives you that taste, that hunger. It keeps you starving knowing that we’re not just doing a year of workouts,” Vance said. “We all love to do this. I feel like it was an advantage for us.”
Hill, who coached the Wildcats to a Big Sky championship in the spring, claimed he wasn’t worried about injuries any more than any other year. He noted they happen even during spring practices anyway and said a lack of physicality may lead to injuries because the players aren’t as prepared for it.
When asked if he feels any soreness after playing a season only a few months ago, Weber State wide receiver Rashid Shaheed smiled and said, “all good.”
“I feel like we’re more prepared than we expected,” Shaheed added. “It definitely was a quick turnaround, but coaches and our trainers did a good job of getting our bodies back and made us feel good going up to this point.”
Sacramento State, like MSU, hasn’t played since 2019. When faced with the possibility of a spring schedule preceding fall games, Hornets head coach Troy Taylor believed it would’ve led to a disadvantage. He didn’t feel it was worth the risk.
But he stressed whether that’s true won’t be for certain until after this fall.
“There’s no definable answer. We’ll know maybe more in the fall,” he said. “Maybe it’ll be really clear, maybe it won’t be.”
406mtsports.com reporter Victor Flores contributed to this story.
