Celebrate the ‘super seniors,’ who should mean great things in 2021
Come sit out here on the limb with me while I make a prediction so grandiose that you can smell the bourbon — except that it’s 2:42 p.m. on Wednesday and the strongest thing I’ve guzzled today is unsweetened tea.
The 2021 season will be the best-played season in the history of college football.
Down on the Alabama Gulf Coast where I grew up, there is a phenomenon called a jubilee, wherein fish, crab and shrimp of all shapes and sizes swim to shallow water and practically leap into the cookware. Just about every college football program this fall is going to have a full skillet.
Because the NCAA gave everyone a free year of eligibility to compensate for the pandemic, the sixth-year “super seniors” that can and did stick around will make rosters older, more experienced and deeper than they’ve been in 40 years.
“You could argue that this will be the oldest college football ever is,” Virginia Tech coach Justin Fuente said.
“I feel like we have good balance within our six classes now,” said no college football coach ever — until Kentucky’s Mark Stoops at SEC Media Days.
The worth of age and experience usually is measured more accurately during March Madness, as when Virginia made its stunning run to the NCAA men’s basketball championship in 2019. Older players are stronger physically and mentally. Older players provide more depth that a coach is confident to use.
Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi begins preseason practice with 13 super seniors. “Three years ago, we were out in July, watching our guys run around (in) a 30-minute workout,” he said, “and I’m looking at our linebackers thinking, ‘We’re in trouble. I mean, we’re in deep trouble.’ Now, you better show up at practice. You better be ready to go or you’re going to get beat out.”
The numbers are staggering. Ole Miss came out of spring practice with 13 seniors on its two-deep. Iowa State has 25 seniors, eight of them sixth-year guys.
“They felt that there was a gap somewhere they could improve and take advantage of this,” Cyclones coach Matt Campbell said, “and I think my ask as the coach is, ‘Don’t come back just to come back; come back to improve.’ ”
A senior who improves is a force. Multiply that by 25.
“Their leadership on and off the field, to demand the standard day-in and day-out, has been exceptional,” Campbell said.
Arizona State returns 30 lettermen on defense. Texas Tech will start 10 seniors on defense. And on and on. There’s an advantage in maturity, physically and emotionally. The coordinator can hand out a thicker playbook, too.
“I think having that experience will allow us to do more than we have in the past,” Wake Forest sixth-year linebacker Luke Masterson said, “because we have guys who understand the game of football on multiple different levels.”
‘Super seniors’ a one-year reversal of a trend
The jubilee of older players has slowed an unmistakable trend of the past 40 years, when college football became younger. In the 1980s, after a USFL owner named Donald Trump signed the 1982 Heisman winner, Georgia tailback Herschel Walker, after his junior season, the NFL relaxed its policy, eventually allowing players to become draft-eligible three years out of high school.
In the 1990s, Florida State remained a perennial national championship contender with an assembly line of fourth-year junior quarterbacks. They redshirted one season, backed up for two, then played for two.
In the early 2000s, when then-coach Pete Carroll transformed USC into a dynasty, he flipped the traditional philosophy of redshirting. What had been “Come in and wait your turn” became “Come in and I’ll give you a chance.” Word spread quickly among top recruits that Carroll didn’t favor upperclassmen, and the Trojans reaped the benefits.
As more top-level players began to leave after their junior year, the roster paradigm shifted. Three-and-out, forever the battle cry of defenses, came to be the goal of every first-year player worth his five stars: Play three seasons and head for the NFL. Talented seniors, once a goal, became a luxury, especially after the NCAA allowed players to transfer upon graduation. With so many players attending classes in the summer, graduating in three years no longer is a novelty.
All of which makes this season seem even more unusual. And unless there’s another pandemic, this season will be a one-off. Even if the roots of these veteran players are buried in the tainted soil of the pandemic, it’s nice to think that all the hardships and misery of the 2020 season will blossom into an array of gifts.
Masterson, Wake Forest’s sixth-year linebacker, not only gets another season of college football, he will practice and play with his little brother, Christian. Christian was a seventh-grader when Luke signed with Wake in February 2016.
“He’s so much younger than me,” Luke said. “That (playing with him) was a thought that never really crossed my mind.”
Luke Masterson is the oldest of eight children, experience that comes in handy as he surveys Wake’s locker room.
“It is weird,” Masterson said. “I was born in ’98 and the majority of our team was born in the 2000s.”
It will be weird, and it should be wonderful. As college football fans, we just can’t get used to it.
(Top photo: Keith Gillett/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)