COLUMBUS, Ohio – The 2020 season is not even a month old, but it is on to the 2021 season and talk of spring practice is already taking center stage.

Rewind a year ago and the Buckeyes made it through three practices before the world was turned upside down and the college football calendar was ripped up, never to return to normal.

Moving back to today, the hope is to find some return of normalcy, at least in terms of actually having a spring as Ohio State and every other program across the nation saw their spring practice sessions altered and eventually shut down.

Ohio State head coach Ryan Day was asked about what a Buckeye spring practice may look like and while no decisions have been locked in, the discussions have been going on and there are some rough ideas in place.

“Probably start middle of March and have four weeks of spring ball,” Day said. “That is not set in stone right now, but that is what we are targeting.”

There will not be a spring break for the students at Ohio State, so no creative scheduling will be put in place to try and maximize extra meeting times based on how the NCAA rules are written around spring practices and meeting time with players. That would mean that the spring game would be around a familiar time, based on previous calendars.

“We are hoping that we can play the spring game possibly that April 17th weekend,” Day added.

There are no indications if the spring game would be open to fan attendance, Ohio State did not sell tickets to the general public in 2020, having a few games where family was allowed to enter the stadium, but even that went away as the season went on. The Buckeyes did play their final games in front of limited people, friends/family at the Big Ten Championship Game and then an actual general admission when it came to the College Football Playoff.

All of those details will be sorted out in the coming days and weeks. There also would be an expectation that any sort of spring game would be televised by the Big Ten Network, but none of that was discussed on Wednesday.

It will be an important spring for the Buckeyes with a lot of key players to replace including a record-setting quarterback in Justin Fields, a couple of multiple-year starters on the offensive line with Josh Myers and Wyatt Davis, an entire linebacker group and several other talented defensive players including the likes of Shaun Wade, Jonathon Cooper and Tommy Togiai.

It is pretty safe to say that this is going to be the most important spring practice under Day during his short head coaching career, maybe even more important than his first spring practice, just based on trying to find a path back to normalcy.

“I think the thing for us is that we are planning on having a somewhat normal spring where we can have six weeks of a lead-up of working in the facility and then having a normal spring practice schedule,” Day said.

But nothing truly is normal in this day and age, and while it would be nice to know that “these are the days” that you are going to practice and “this is when a spring game” will be, there are still going to be a lot of things that could keep things up in the air.

“The thing that is not different is we are still under COVID protocols, so we still can’t have a lot of group things together,” Day added. ”We still have to make sure we are following all of those things, still being tested and all of that.”

It would have to be considered a monumental win if the Buckeyes are able to get a full 15-practice schedule in, work on developing some depth and be able to help 15 mid-year enrollees to make the adjustment to college football, something that the class before them did not get the opportunity with the sudden termination of spring practice and subsequent return to home and away from campus.

“We are hoping all to be together and not broken up like we were last year,” Day said.

We will keep everyone up-to-date as we learn more about what Ohio State’s spring practice schedule may look like.