Brown hopes for changes to practice schedule in future

It isn’t happening anytime soon, but Neal Brown would like to see some changes to preseason practices.

Currently college football teams have 25 practices in the fall in order to prepare themselves for the start of the season with the same players going up against each other over and over. As you can imagine there is some monotony there due to the routine which college programs operate under.

Brown has brought up a way to break that up at AFCA meetings in the past by taking on an NFL model to allow two teams to hold joint back-to-back practices together. In those sessions teams could do a variety of drills such as 7-on-7, pass protection, pass rush, inside drills and some controlled team settings.

There wouldn’t necessarily be a scrimmage or preseason game like the professionals, but it would benefit those on the roster and the coaching staff to matchup against somebody different.

“It’s never going to be to the point where they let us do a preseason game even though the NFL makes a lot of money with it,” Brown said.

The other team participating doesn’t need to be a power five team either as it could simply be one located within each school’s region with coaching staffs that trust each other. That prevents any type of sharing to others and coaches can make sure that they are practicing in the same manner.

“I think it would break it up and I’d think you would be able to have a little bit better of an idea going into the opening game,” Brown said.

It would benefit the entire roster but especially those younger players that are going to be asked to play bigger roles as it would put them in different situations that are hard to simulate in traditional practices. It also would allow for a better overall product when the season begins.

But the reason it probably won’t be happening anytime soon is simply all of the other concerns on the plates of college coaches and decision makers when it comes to the game.

“We’ve got a lot of other fires to put out before we get to that one,” Brown said.

Right now, the concern is with other issues such as the regulation of the transfer portal and with name, image and likeness which has sent essentially everything else to the backburner from a competition standpoint.

The other concern comes with recruiting and how the coaches can manage the demanding calendar.

It’s a topic that even Brown admits is more important to get settled in the immediate future which makes trying to sort out some of the competition concerns difficult.

“If you ask me what’s more important the recruiting calendar getting that fixed or having another team practice, I’m going to say recruiting calendar,” he said.

But Brown hopes that within the next five to ten years you’re going to see some version of the joint practice setting play out even if it is in spring ball at first.

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