BOULDER — Why fall back when you can spring forward?
“To have a competitive (spring game) against your own guys kind of gets monotonous,” third-year CU Buffs football coach Deion Sanders said Monday during his first BoCo news conference of 2025. “You really can’t tell the level of your guys because it’s the same old, same way. Everybody kind of (knows) each other.
“Towards the end (of spring), I would like to style it like the pros. I would like to practice against someone for a few days, then you have the spring game. And I think the public will be satisfied with that tremendously. I think it’s a tremendous idea. I’ve told those personnel who should understand that it’s a tremendous idea.”
Sure is. On this, Coach Prime absolutely has my vote — an unequivocal thumbs up. It’s pure marketing genius and about a decade overdue.
Mind you, 60% of the FBS programs and 75% of the stodgy, uptight athletic directors in the Big Ten would probably never agree to it. But he’s dead on: It’s a tremendous idea.
Let’s be real: College football, or college football you knew through about 2019, is dead as a doornail. Nick Saban, Mack Brown and Jim McElwain ain’t walking through that door. Stanford, whose football stadium is roughly 23 miles from the Pacific Ocean, plays in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Big 12 country stretches from Tucson to Morgantown, eating up three time zones in the process.
Spring ball has long needed a kick in the pants. Everybody pretty much has the same window to work with, but almost every coach, out of tradition or habit, chooses to wrap things up as flaccidly as humanly possible.
At best, you get a soggy scrimmage played in front of a mostly packed stadium. The typical spring game playbook could fit onto a 3-inch by 5-inch note card. The good quarterbacks run around in non-contact jerseys. And the great quarterbacks sit the thing out entirely. Stats are tracked and box scores are kept, but those numbers are pointless. Coaches want to keep things clutched so tightly to their vest that any sense of enjoyment winds up getting strangled in the process.
Spring forward, or fall back.
“We got to sell this (’25 spring game) out,” Sanders said, “because the way the trend is going, you never know if (It’s) going to be the last spring game. I don’t believe in that. I don’t really want to condone that. I would like to play in the spring. Actually, I (would) like to play against another team in the spring. That’s what I’m trying to do right now.”
This isn’t the first time Sanders has expressed an interest in a two-school spring scrimmage. He did so two years ago, not long after he arrived in Boulder. But it’s a hot topic now because at least 19 FBS peers — including big hitters such as Ohio State, Texas and Nebraska — have decided to do away with spring games altogether.
On Monday, not long after Sanders went public (again) with his plan, a coaching peer went public — very public — with an offer to take him up on it. And welcome to the party, Syracuse coach Fran Brown!
“We will come to Boulder for 3 days,” Brown Xwitter-ed Monday afternoon.
Like the old saying goes, it only takes two.
Spring forward, or fall back.
I understand the rebuttals. Flying a football team halfway across the country is expensive as heck. Although that sure as heck hasn’t stopped anybody from scheduling Week 0 games in Ireland.
And yes, Lord help you should somebody — especially somebody important — get hurt. You’d never hear the end of it from fans, boosters, parents or columnists in July if a Heisman front-runner blew out his Achilles during a scrimmage at Folsom in April.
But instead, some of the reasons coaches have offered as to why they’re killing their spring games, at least publicly, have bordered on the asinine.
Cornhuskers coach Matt Rhule, for example, told ESPN recently that a spring game would only open the door for more school-to-school tampering — as if that’s ever going away in the transfer portal age.
“Canceling the spring game,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney noted recently, “ain’t gonna stop tampering.”
It ain’t.
Spring forward, or fall back.
Look, House vs. NCAA is costing CU an additional $20 million per year in revenue sharing starting next fiscal year. It pays to be creative.
How much would you fork over to watch the Buffs play Syracuse in April? CU drew 28,424 to its ’24 spring game. The Buffs drew 47,277 through a snowstorm in 2023. Split the difference, and that’s about 38,000 who paid to get in.
At $25 a ticket for CU-‘Cuse, that’s a net gate of $950,000. Assuming 10,000 cars pay another $20 to park, there’s an additional $200K in the bank. Now we’re at $1.15 million for doing something you were probably already going to do anyway.
In college football, the tail wags the dog. If ESPN or FOX want spring scrimmages, they’ll pony up enough to make it happen. And if the fuddy-duddies at Nebraska and Texas aren’t putting out something watchable due to portal paranoia and CU is, if they’re willingly ceding all that free advertising, then let them. By all means.
Spring forward, or fall back.
“That’s probably why everybody’s moving to stop spring games. I don’t know why,” Sanders said. “(Because) you’re not going to stop (anybody) from leaving … The kids are already gone. Like, they already reached out and contacted somebody else. They’re already gone. Like, that’s not going to stop them …
“I’m just thinking of a way to improve. That’s why I want to play against somebody.”
How dare Deion Sanders drag college football into the 21st century? Bring on the Orange. Although if Brown is down, I’ve got two words of advice. Layer up. Just in case.
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