Podcast: Lessons from Miami’s first scrimmage. And the impact of NCAA eligibility relief
No matter what happens with college football this year, the Miami Hurricanes at least got to hit the field for real-ish action once.
Miami suited up for its first scrimmage of training camp Saturday and this sure-to-be bizarre time finally felt a little bit real. There were statistics and highlights, and top performers and a score to be counted, even if it ultimately didn’t matter.
On a new episode of the Eye on the U podcast, David Wilson and Susan Miller Degnan, the Hurricanes beat writer for the Miami Herald, spend a lot of time talking about a scrimmage neither of them saw. Mostly, we’re just excited to hear some real football actually happened, but there were also opportunities to learn about this Hurricanes team by scouring the stats and reading between the lines on coach Manny Diaz’s impressions.
Sure, quarterback D’Eriq King was great behind closed doors, but we all expected that. The reports on freshmen Donald Chaney Jr., Jalyan Knighton and Xavier Restrepo, instead, sound like revelations, and the linebacker competition sounds even more fierce than we originally expected.
There’s also some COVID-19 news to touch on, of course. This time, it’s an impending NCAA decision people are actually happy about.
The NCAA is poised to grant everyone playing fall sports an extra year of eligibility, no matter how games he or she might play in 2020. This is uniformly good news and will certainly help Miami, although maybe not in the most obvious ways you might initially think.
As good as it is for the seniors with uncertain NFL futures, it also could be a boon for underclassmen unsure how much they’re going to be playing this year.
In a year so far devoid of almost any good news, this is at least one positive development, hinting the NCAA might actually finally be using some critical thinking about what college sports might look like amid the coronavirus pandemic.
