The COVID-19 pandemic could push the upcoming college football season into the spring of 2021. If that scenario occurs, Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer thinks top prospects hoping to be selected in the 2021 NFL Draft would be prudent to skip their final collegiate season.

The two-time national championship winning coach opined that it's one thing to ask a player to compete through an entire college football season. But it's another to have them immediately be ready for NFL mini-camp in May, given the compressed schedule.

“It’d be hard for me not to advise them and tell them to play,” Urban Meyer told Yahoo Sports. “To play in spring and then go play in OTAs in the National Football League, that's not fair . . If you have a chance after you fulfilled your commitment to a university to go and earn a living playing football, I don’t know if I’d advise a guy to play a spring season before going to the NFL draft.”

The Ivy League and SWAC have already postponed fall sports, as the Power 5 conferences remain in negotiations on how to proceed with their fall seasons. The Pac-12 and Big Ten, among others, have revealed intentions to play a conference-only schedule.

If a Power 5 conference is forced to push their football season into the spring, it will force extremely difficult decisions upon a slew of top-flight NFL prospects.

“There’ll be a significant amount of guys,” opting out of a spring season, one coach told Yahoo. “I think for a lot of those guys, they’re going to go into it and see the mock drafts already. If they are in the top 3-4 rounds, they’re probably just going to say, ‘I don’t want to get hurt.’”