TAMPA, Fla. — The COVID-19 pandemic has rattled the college football landscape.
“When that whole thing happened and our season crashed, we didn’t know what was going to happen,” Samford University quarterback Chris Oladokun said.
While many conferences, like the Power 5, chose to play a fall schedule, other conferences decided to move its schedule to the spring.
Oladokun, a former Sickles High School star and South Florida quarterback, has big dreams with a professional football career riding on his senior season at Samford.
“Everything I wanted to do was going to be in this season,” he said. “Everything I wanted to put on tape I had to put it on tape this season.”
The NCAA canceled the fall FCS playoffs in august, then moved the FCS season to the spring. Until then, Oladokun stays ready, working out at various open fields around Tampa Bay.
“I come out here three or four times a week,” Oladokun said. “I go through our route tree, I go through our script. Then when I am with (quarterback coach) C.J. Bennett, I work on all my off-timing plays that you see me make on Saturdays that aren’t on-schedule plays.”
Samford, which plays in the Southern Conference, will play a full eight-game conference schedule beginning in February.
Oladokun will get what amounts to be two senior seasons. The NCAA Division-I council approved a proposal that would grant an extra year of eligibility for all fall athletes.
“I have the option to play both, I’m going to play both,” he said. “It’s going to be huge for me in my development for the next level. I was talking to (Samford head coach Chris Hatcher), this whole quarantine thing, I have grown just so much, football, as a person, in the weight room. I really think it’s been a blessing in disguise.”
Oladokun leaves for spring training in Birmingham in January.
