SLU Lions Potentially Setting Up For Disaster
The Southeastern Lions Football 2021 Spring Season might likely affect the 2021 Fall Season in many possible ways.
The Lions will open their spring season on February 27, 2021 at Sam Houston State. SLU will play six games this season, excluding the playoffs. If the team made it all the way through the playoffs, the spring season will most likely end around the beginning of June. Most college football seasons start around August. That would be between a two-three month range from the end of the spring season to the fall season. A normal football season starts around August and ends around the beginning of January, where a nine month break would begin from the end of the previous season to the start of the next. Most teams take that time to practice, study, and adjust themselves to get ready for the following season. But a team would most likely not be fit to play after a two-three month break. New players would need to learn the playbooks, and players that sustained major injuries would have a better chance of catching another major injury.
According to NCAA’s Football Inquiry, on a normal football schedule, the preseason has the highest injury rate with 9.7 out of 1,000 athlete exposures. In the regular season, there are 7.5 injuries per 1,000 players. In the postseason, there are 4.5 injuries per 1,000 players. So after this upcoming spring season, the players would have a shorter time to get ready for the fall season, which would most likely result in more injuries because they would not have the same amount of time to rest as they would during a normal football season.
According to SportsMD, there are over 400 deaths in sports linked to heat related illnesses per year. Most of those deaths in football happened around the start of the season, which is around August and September, where it is still hot and warm from the summer, but it would get colder as it goes past fall and winter. The Lions spring season will start February 27, which is near the end of winter. Being in Louisiana, it would have already warmed around that time, so the whole season would be a hot mess. Since the University of Pittsburgh Medicine Center recommends that players should be prepared for playing in the heavy heat, it would be hard to prepare since it would be cold, so there would most likely give more heat related illnesses and injuries.
So what could the situation be to fix the situation? The council could push to postpone the fall season to October. This could give the Lions two more months to rest and heal before the fall season could begin. The season could have a six game season like the 2021 spring season, so it helps kick back into normal football schedule. This would most likely match with the normal playoff schedule as well, with the playoffs starting around mid-December to around the start of January.
If the Southeastern Lions do not take care of themselves this season, it will definitely come back to haunt them for their fall season.
WORKS CITED:
NCAA FOOTBALL INQUIRY. (Retrieved November 23, 2020). https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/NCAA_Football_Injury_WEB.pdf
FOOTBALL TRAINING AND COMMON INJURIES. (2020). https://www.upmc.com/services/sports-medicine/for-athletes/football
Heat Related Illness. (November 2020). https://www.sportsmd.com/performance/heat-related-illness/
