What are USU football players doing with spring season delayed?
Thursday was when Utah State football’s annual blue and white spring game was supposed to take place, but Maverick Stadium remained empty.
With the fight to contain the COVID-19 pandemic continuing, spring football is one of the casualties, and the 2020 college football season is hanging in the balance.
Missing the spring season has been difficult for the Aggie football team, but especially for the seniors.
“I’m upset about it,” said senior linebacker Kevin Meitzenheimer. “I feel like due to going back to a new defense, switching over to a new offense, we needed it as a team so we could better ourselves for the future.”
Senior wide receiver Jordan Nathan shared a similar sentiment.
“Just not being on the field, getting a better chemistry for the team and the coaches and stuff like that, I feel like it came at a bad time,” Nathan said.
The Aggies are replacing coordinators on both sides of the ball. Bodie Reeder — previously the offensive coordinator at the University of North Texas — is taking over the reins of the offense. Frank Maile and Stacy Collins, both entering their fourth year as USU coaches, will be co-defensive coordinators. No time is ideal to have practice cancelled, but when USU is overhauling its entire system, that can put a team weeks or months behind schedule.
But the players have been diligent in learning their new offense and new defense from inside their homes.
“We have our Zoom meetings and FaceTime calls and making sure that I dive into my playbook at least once a day,” Nathan said.
Nathan, who has been recovering from a shoulder injury, has committed to be a leader of the team as all the uncertainty swirls around.
“I just reassure them that the season’s still coming up, that we still have plans, we still have goals to accomplish,” he said. “Just because you’re at home doesn’t mean you wake up at 12 o’clock in the afternoon and go to sleep at 2 o’clock in the morning. Still go through your routine so when you get back you’re already ready to go.”
Meitzenheimer said he is “safe and sound in Cache Valley” and working out as much as he can to be ready for the season.
“We do 45-pound plates, some curls, situps, anything I can do around the house,” he said, “then going outside, finding different patches of grass so I can just do a little bit of footwork, and run here and there.”
Both players have endured hills and valleys over their careers and have high expectations for their final season in the Aggie blue.
“Last year I don’t feel like we weren’t really a team, we didn’t have a lot of chemistry,” Nathan said.
But with a new offensive system and a new quarterback in Henry Colombi, he feels like this could be a great year — especially since Nathan has his eyes on the Mountain West Conference championship.
“Henry Columbi would throw the ball to me a lot more than Jordan [Love] would,” he said.
Meitzinheimer has the same goal in mind. “Number one goal is the Mountain West Championship for sure. I really, really want that bad.”
But in order to achieve that goal, football will have to be played. So what is the best course of action to get the athletes on the football field safe and healthy, ideally by the Sept. 5 opener at home against Washington State?
“The dream of mine would be to come back June 1 and have nine to 12 days where we can have an NFL style mini-camp,” Head coach Gary Anderson said in a recent interview. “My biggest fear is that if we don’t get them back here by June 1 is the injuries will go through the roof, and that scares me.”
And if June 1 is not a possibility Anderson said, “We need to take a long hard look at cutting back the number of games that these kids are going to play this year.”
Nathan is not too keen on that idea.
“I don’t really want to think about not having a last season, not playing a full season because it’s my senior year and I want to get everything out of it,” he said. “It would be extremely, extremely heartbreaking for me and my teammates not to be able to play a full season.”
Mountain West spokesperson Stuart Buchanaon said of the situation, “At this time, it is premature to do an interview since the situation is so fluid.”
Missing some — or all — of the fall football season could prove to be very costly. With its athletic department’s revenues and expenses roughly the same, Utah State heavily depends on the money the football team rakes in. Under the Mountain West’s new TV deal with CBS and Fox Sports, USU is expected to receive $4 million in revenue. But if the number of games is reduced, that amount will likely go down. And as reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, the Aggies are already going to lose $600,000 they normally get from the NCAA, which is reducing their financial distribution to schools by 67.5% due to the $800 million lost from not having the Men’s NCAA basketball tournament.
@jacobnielson12
— jacobnielson12@yahoo.com