Urban Meyer: If college football moves to spring, top prospects should sit out

If the COVID-19 pandemic pushes the college football season into the spring of 2021, Urban Meyer would advise players who are expecting to get drafted to skip it.

Meyer, who won national championships at both Florida and Ohio State, said he doesn’t think it’s in a player’s best interests to ask him to play a season of college football from January through April and then be ready for an NFL minicamp in May.

“It’d be hard for me not to advise them and tell them to play,” Meyer told Yahoo Sports. “To play in spring and then go play in OTAs in the National Football League, that’s not fair. . . . If you have a chance after you fulfilled your commitment to a university to go and earn a living playing football, I don’t know if I’d advise a guy to play a spring season before going to the NFL draft.”

Some smaller conferences, including the SWAC and Ivy League, have already postponed their fall sports. Those conferences don’t send many players to the NFL. But if a Power 5 conference were to do the same, that would likely result in dozens of players skipping the season.