To have a spring game, or not have a spring game. That is the question around college football these days, and it appears that Alabama is leaning towards having one.
Even if it won’t be a conventional offense vs. defense football scrimmage.
“I guess I would consider last year’s spring game, A-Day, probably a modified game, you know,” Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer said after his first spring practice. “We’ll see how the spring goes.”
DeBoer said his biggest focus is making the most out of the football practices that Alabama is allotted by the NCAA and designing the spring around that goal in mind.
“To me, it’s just something where we want to have a controlled, controlled reps, you know,” DeBoer said.
“So line it up and getting something out of the practice because I think all 15 practices that we get are really important, getting something out of that.”
He added: “As we go through the spring, we’ll continue to figure out where we’re at to see what we want to, want to do when it comes to the, the day itself.”
Spring games appear to be a thing of the past, at least in the short term as a few high-profile programs have canceled their games in favor of alternative options like closed practices, fan days, or in the case of Texas, an NFL-style organized team activities period.
More … Tracking college football teams that dropped spring games in 2025
The reasons for dropping the traditional spring game depends on the program.
Part of it boils down to some schools playing much longer seasons after the expansion of the College Football Playoff, while for others it’s a matter of not providing other schools what is effectively a free tryout for their players in an age of immediate transfers.
Alabama wants to keep a date for fans on the spring schedule, and to ensure that football remains the center of that event, but in a way that doesn’t hurt the program’s competitive advantage in this new era.
“We want to make it a great celebration for the, for our fan base,” DeBoer said.
“We want to put some football out there because everyone associated with the program, our fan base, can’t wait for April 12th.”
He added: “But we’ve also got to do what’s right for us. So that… would be something, as we get closer, that we can probably give you a little more info on.”
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