College football coaches have long been known to play coy and stretch the truth when it comes to player availability leading up to big games, often driving network executives and gamblers just as crazy as their on-field opponents.
Like so many things from a bygone era, that option is going away, at least when it comes to the College Football Playoff.
Following in the footsteps of the SEC, the College Football Playoff will begin requiring teams to provide player availability reports starting this season, according to Action Network’s Brett McMurphy.
No further details have been provided yet, but we can assume the CFP will follow in the footsteps of the SEC, which instituted a similar rule last season.
For that league, teams are required to release initial availability reports on Wednesdays before Saturday games, followed by daily reports on Thursday and Friday. A final availability report must be provided at least 90 minutes before game time. For any non-Saturday game, the initial report must be submitted three days before kickoff. Every player must be designated as either Available, Probable, Questionable, Doubtful, or Out.
Those rules are very similar to the way the NFL operates, and it’s no surprise to learn that they were implemented mainly to make life easier for the gambling industry. That’s likely a driving factor in this move as well, especially given the industry’s current interconnection with the economics of sports like college football.
Of course, you can still expect plenty of gamesmanship from coaches before CFP games. It remains challenging to police just how “Questionable” a player is before they end up missing the game. As for what will happen if a school is found to have broken the rules around availability reporting, we’ll see.
As college football (and college athletics) continues to acknowledge that it’s a multi-billion-dollar business, it only makes sense to create systems like these. Many will see it as the latest sign that college football is losing its amateur spirit. Others will note that such a thing already ended many years ago.
