If you ask college football fans their favorite team’s first practice, you could get a multitude of responses. Many people’s answers would consist of months from May to August. However, most teams actually hold their first practice in early March in preparation for their spring scrimmage. This tradition goes all the way back to the origins of football in 1899, when Harvard held an open spring showcase at Jarvis Field. However, this did not consist of the now normal intrasquad scrimmage, but rather took the structure of a practice, including drills and other more specialized activities. Over the years, spring practices and games have become more widespread. When the NCAA came into fruition as a governing body, spring practices began to see more restrictions regarding padded practices, hitting, and the number of allowable practices. This was a big change, as pre-NCAA spring football sometimes was even more smash-mouth than its fall counterpart.
In the past decade, spring football scrimmages have drawn some serious attention from fans. In fact, Ohio State University’s 2016 spring game was the most attended in college football history, with just above 100,000 spectators. These high turnouts are vital for a college’s athletic department, allowing it to draw in essentially an extra game’s worth of revenue each year.
Spring games, however, are not the main focus for most teams, but rather the practices. According to the NCAA, spring practices must be conducted over the course of a 34-day period. Each week, teams can hold 20 hours of unrestricted activities, and players must have at least one off day per week. In total, 15 on-field practices can be held, and no more than 12 can involve contact, and only 8 can involve full tackling. Most importantly, spring practices do not take away from pre-season practices in the fall. This means that spring football is essentially an unpunished and unrestricted opportunity for programs to get an early start to the season. During these practices, teams can start to teach younger players the playbook, iron out question marks at positions that may have arisen throughout the offseason, and even get an early start to understanding what works and what doesn’t work for this year’s team of players.
Despite the overwhelming benefits of spring practices, spring games/showcases are beginning to fall out of favor. In fact, according to ESPN, 19 Power 4 teams have canceled their spring games so far. This is primarily because of injury risk and increased tampering in the age of the NCAA transfer portal.
In a press conference on February 1, 2025 that concerned the cancellation of Nebraska’s spring game, head football coach Matt Rhule said, “The word ‘tampering’ doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just an absolutely free, open, common market. I don’t necessarily want to open up to the outside world and have people watch our guys and say, ‘He looks like a pretty good player. Let’s go get him.”
Rhule also talked about last year’s televised spring game, which he said resulted in various coaches contacting his players and attempting to offer them roster spots on other teams.
Although spring games may be losing popularity in some areas, many programs still hold televised spring scrimmages. Ohio State, Purdue, Alabama, Florida, Georgia Tech, and a multitude of other power conference schools played their spring games on April 12, and various other schools such as Texas A&M, Oregon, and the University of Colorado held their spring games later in April.
