The 2020 college football season is reportedly on the brink of collapse, and the NFL is watching closely to see what happens next. There will be huge repercussions for the pro league if the NCAA wipes out the season or even just moves it to the spring.

Think a July NFL Draft, no NFL Scouting Combine, and mostly virtual scouting. Imagine a rush of college players opting out of their final college seasons, choosing to stand on what they did way back in 2019. And prepare for Saturday afternoon NFL games, with maybe a few under the Friday night lights, too.

It could all be a mess, and it certainly will be different, since whatever the colleges do will prompt the NFL to make some mostly unwanted changes. Of course, the league will wait for the NCAA to determine its own fate, which began in earnest with the Big Ten reportedly voting to cancel the fall season on Monday. It will let the colleges sort out their plans, and then give some time for the dust to settle before the big decisions have to be made.

But everyone around the NFL is watching and wondering about the fallout.

With the help of some league sources, here’s what they’re looking at, and why:

The NFL Draft probably will be postponed

The 2021 draft is scheduled to be held from April 29 through May 1 in Cleveland, which could be right in the middle of a spring college football season. That won’t work since every player drafted would immediately stop playing for their college teams. So postponing the draft seems necessary.

However, the CBA says the draft must be held by June 2 – and even that doesn’t give the NFL enough time for the pre-draft process like the Combine, the Pro Days, the meetings, etc. The NFL and NFLPA could agree to delay it to late June or July, which might work logistically, but would result in rookies basically going straight from the draft to training camp.

That’s tough, but it’s also basically what happened this offseason, with just a few weeks of virtual meetings added in between.

There could be a mass player opt out of a spring season

Penn State linebacker Micah Parsons, a likely Top 10 pick in the 2021 draft, has already opted out. So has Miami defensive end Greg Rousseau, who might be the best pass rusher in the draft. So has Virginia Tech cornerback Caleb Farley, another possible first rounder. And if the fall season is wiped out they surely won’t be alone.

Several agents and scouts said they expected “a ton” of draft-eligible players to skip a spring season, especially if they are projected to go in the first three rounds of the draft.

“We get these guys training specifically for the draft from the end of their college season through their Pro Days,” one NFL agent said. “That’s 3-4 months. Now you want me to tell them it’s OK to wrap up their college season in May and run right off to the combine or a Pro Day -- if they even have those? With no training or time to rest or heal?

“Why would any kid do that?”

It certainly makes no sense for any potential first-rounder to play in the spring. They may want to play in the fall – as Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields began tweeting the last few days. But Lawrence and Fields are the likely first two picks in the draft. A spring season would surely be far too big of a risk for them.

And it’s not just the big names, either. One agent suggested all draftable players projected for any round should consider skipping a spring season. “I’d rather send them to some coach or training academy and have them do combine drills for months,” he said. “Let them stand on their 2019 tape, if it’s good enough. There’s far less risk of getting hurt. If a kid gets hurt in a game a month before the draft, he’s done.”

The entire pre-draft process would be a mess

Daniel Jeremiah, a former NFL scout and current analyst at NFL Network, tweeted that the end of the 2020 college season would make the 2021 NFL Scouting Combine “the most important one in league history.”

That’s true. But can the Combine even happen? And if so, when?

If college football is wiped out, the Combine could be scheduled as usual for late February in Indianapolis. But they can’t do that if the college season is moved to the spring. And who knows if they can even do a Combine anyway – with thousands of players, coaches, scouts, medical personnel, front office personnel, agents, league officials, media, sponsors and fans jammed into a small city in relative confined environments for what is usually a pretty hands-on experience?

The COVID-19 pandemic might have the last word on that and the Senior Bowl and, for the second straight year, Pro Days. It’s possible the pre-draft process might end up virtual again. And that will be even more problematic if it’s condensed into just a few weeks between the end of a spring season and a rescheduled draft.

“We spend months working on a draft board after the (college) season ends, and we still tinker with it until the last minute,” said one NFL scout. “Now we may end up with, what, a month? And with less than half the information we usually have?”

Of course, if there’s a mass opt-out of draftable players, those players could be evaluated sooner – perhaps in a scaled-down Combine that just included on-field drills and medical evaluations. That would make some of the evaluations easier.

But, said the scout: “Whatever it is, it won’t be business-as-usual. And when that happens, that’s when the really big mistakes get made.”

Saturday games

If you’re looking for a bright side, there aren’t many. But the NFL will surely see one if the NCAA vacates Saturdays in the fall. The NFL loves having a stage all to itself and they almost certainly will move some of its games to Saturday afternoon. One NFL source said it wouldn’t be shocking to see the NFL try a few Friday night games too, if the majority of high school football seasons – especially in the South – get called off.

“If the league sees a void,” one NFL source said, “it will fill it.”

That rescheduling will be easy, too, since most – if not all – games will be played with no fans in the stands. And surely networks will welcome the chance for some high-profile, top-rated programming to fill the sports void in the fall.

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