Cullowhee, N.C. – The Southern Conference held its football virtual media day event on Thursday morning ahead of the spring 2021 conference season as each of the league's nine head coaches as well as conference commissioner Jim Schaus addressed and answered questions from media members in an online forum hosted by Jason Patterson.
 
Also on Thursday, the league's head coaches spent time with Pete Yanity for a preseason football preview broadcast that will air on Friday, Jan. 22 at 11:00 am on ESPN+ (paid subscription required) where it will also be archived for future viewing. All of the coaches took part in the preseason special beginning with The Citadel with WCU head coach Mark Speir sixth in the viewing order.
 
Having been back on campus for over a week for preseason training, Western Carolina (0-3) officially opens its spring 2021 practice on Friday, Jan. 22 with the first of two helmet-only sessions as a part of the acclimation ramp-up period. Those two sessions will be followed by a pair of practices in helmet and shoulder pads before going in full-pads. The Catamounts open their conference schedule on Saturday, Feb., 20 in the first of back-to-back road games, traveling to Greenville, S.C., to face the Furman Paladins.
 
Due to compliance with ongoing COVID protocols and construction to the façade of the Ramsey Center, each of WCU's preseason practices is closed to the public.
 
Kickoff times and attendance information for WCU's four home dates as well as the four road games will be released in the coming weeks. Each SoCon game this spring is slated to be available on ESPN+ (paid subscription required) or ESPN3 (cable/satellite subscription required), with audio through the Catamount Sports Network and online at CatamountSports.com.
 
Keep track of everything related to Catamount Football and WCU Athletics through its social media outlets on Facebook (FB.com/CatamountSports), and Twitter (@Catamounts, @CatamountsFB).
 
Here's an excerpt of the transcript from Thursday's media call with WCU head football coach Mark Speir:
 
Opening Statements:
"We're really excited about this spring season. We had the opportunity as a football program thanks to our administration to play three games in the fall. We learned a lot about externals, the logistics, a lot about our football team. We've got an incredibly young football that I'm really excited about."
 
"We've had five new players come in, mid-year guys added to our roster including two quarterbacks, a defensive lineman, a big wide receiver transfer and a cornerback. I'm really excited about these two new quarterbacks that are going to join and compete with Will Jones who is coming back as our present starter."
 
"We had a new defensive staff under Andy McCollum, our new defensive coordinator. This fall gave us an opportunity to really get him and his system down for this spring, allowed the guys to learn his system and for him to evaluate our players. Our guys have really bought in to Coach McCollum."
 
"I know some people are a little anxious about what spring will be, but I think playing those three games in the fall really gave us a comfort zone, gave the team a comfort zone and we're really excited about this opportunity. What a time to empower these young men and to teach them life lessons. It's a choice that every team's making about how to handle COVID, how important it is to play, and our administration has done a phenomenal job in our protocols and we're ready to go."
 
On the on-going battle at the quarterback position:
"Mark Wright entered the transfer portal and he is not with us. He got injured early in the Eastern Kentucky game. So, going into this spring season, Will Jones is our starter. But (graduate transfer) Ryan Glover has a lot of starts at University of Pennsylvania – he's even played wide receiver there. So, he's a very athletic guy, a very smart guy who graduated in three and a half years from Penn, entering grad school and will be here in the spring and fall here. Ryan's very much in the mix. And (junior college transfer) Carlos Davis, who is from Baltimore, Md., played at East Mississippi in junior college. He's a big, 6-3, 215-lbs., guy that can run. He's physical and got a cannon for an arm. So, those three guys, we're going to throw them in the mix"
 
"Our whole intent in those three games in the fall was to play a lot of players at every position – and we got that accomplished. We treated it a lot like a preseason NFL. We went in to every game to win, but we had an agenda to play a lot of players because that's what you're going to have to do in a COVID world. You're going to have certain players that just aren't going to be available if the trends continue like they did in the fall. So, we wanted to see what we had and give a lot of young guy's experience."
 
"About the 10th practice into our preseason, we're going to say, 'this is our starter' and that's who we'll rally this football team around."
 
On assessing the defense under defensive coordinator Andy McCollum:
"We are so much better than we've been in a long time on defense here. I'm really excited – I haven't been this excited about our defense in a long time. Coach McCollum is a detailed, fundamental, longtime guy. In this league, you've got to defend the option. He spent nine years with Paul Johnson there at Georgia Tech as a linebacker coach, so he's got a good idea. Now he's got to teach that to our defense. To win this conference, you've got to defend the run and you've got to defend the option, and that's a big reason why we brought him here. He hasn't disappointed to this point."
 
On steps taken to play this spring and looking ahead to fall semester:
"Number one, it starts with education about what this virus is. When you're talking to 18-to-22 year olds, they're '10-foot tall and bulletproof,' and so, it all starts with your protocols. Our athletic training staff has done a phenomenal job."
 
"I think that we've got an advantage, hopefully; (playing three games in the fall) gives us an advantage over some of the SoCon teams that didn't play because there are things that come up. You think you've thought of everything, but in a COVID world, you've got to have a team, a coaching staff, and a training staff that's ready to adjust in the moment. You've got to have calm and clarity, and you can't let a routine eat you up."
 
"(This spring), it's an opportunity for the FCS to really showcase our programs. Some people talk about doing it forever in the spring – I'm not a proponent of that. But what I think is that this gives us an opportunity for everybody in America who might not know about FCS football, they're going to get the opportunity to say 'hey, there's some really good teams, some great universities, and some well-coached football teams.' I think that we can use this opportunity to showcase our talents in our programs in the Southern Conference."
 
"We've got to be extremely smart. We're going to practice very different; we're not going to practice near as long, we're not going to tackle near as much as we normally do. But I think this spring is a great opportunity for our program."
 
On learning how to negotiate COVID through the fall semester – from other schools that may or may not have had issues:
"You get ideas from all. We've talked to the schools that had major problems as to what they saw as the issue; they helped us out tremendously in that way. And then we called the schools that didn't have a lot of problems and you just verified a lot of things. So, it was a little mixture of both."