JACKSONVILLE, Ala. — Dustin Hill is jostling down two flights of stairs in quite a hurry.
Soon he’ll be the last one to arrive at the morning staff meeting and the first one, as it turns out, with the floor to himself. As the head athletic trainer at Jacksonville State, Hill’s responsibilities, especially this year, stretch beyond the injury report.
“I’m the COVID-19 expert and I’m the weatherman!” he says, shaking a printed weather report in his clenched fist.
For days now folks here have been buzzing about the impending winter storm. Even before Hill reads his report aloud, the entire football coaching staff seems aware of the elements awaiting them at the afternoon’s practice. And if they don’t know, they’d only need to glance through the single window of this cramped conference room to find the answer: gray skies, frosted treetops and their football field awash in snow.
“So,” head coach John Grass looks toward Hill, “it’s not going to get above freezing today, that right?”
Although this weather event, even for mid-February, is an anomaly here in the Deep South, it doesn’t exempt the peculiarity of it happening five days before more than 90 college football teams begin their season. Across the country this week, the first football game week arrived for those in the Football Championship Subdivision, the lower level of NCAA Division I that delayed its season to the spring because of COVID-19.
Week 1 preparation unfolded in the bitter February cold, far removed from the heat of August, its traditional place on the calendar. Instead of concerns over heat exhaustion, there were worries of hypothermia. Cooling misters, typical for a fall camp, were replaced with electric heaters, and some teams even practiced inside basketball gymnasiums.
This snow-swept day in north Alabama is the latest bizarre twist in a most unusual year for the Jacksonville State Gamecocks, a program that decided to play both last fall and this spring. They began practice in July, held what amounted to a two-month-long preseason camp, and then played four games in October before taking off eight weeks. They returned in January for a second camp, were scheduled to begin a seven-game spring season Sunday at Tennessee State and then, after all of that, plan to complete a full, 11-game schedule this coming fall.
The Gamecocks, and a handful of other FCS programs, are assured of playing at least 18 games in a nine-month span. With a deep playoff run, JSU would participate in more than 20 games in less than a calendar year and more than 25 in 13 months—something many historians believe could be a first in the college ranks.
Even within their own program, there is uneasiness, from players, coaches and medical staff alike, that such a grinding slate will inflict damage to athletes’ bodies as well as, experts contend, their brains.
“It’s unheard of,” says Hill. “We have no road map in navigating through this. No one’s ever done it.”
