Some Brewing before March Madness, which is always a treat, but not quite as much fun around here as last year on Selection Sunday.
Football talk it is. We’ll get some Snow flurries, and highlight a receiver who hasn’t come up in early offseason chatter as much as I think he normally would have pre-portal. Maybe that’s a good thing? We’ll ponder it.
But first, a defense of spring football.
Because there’s some college coaches promoting the idea of eliminating spring football and going to more of an NFL setup with OTA-like workouts in basically June. Matt Rhule is not one of them.
Good on Rhule.
Maybe there’s some selfishness here. I am adapting to change, promise. But not everything needs an axe taken to it. Spring football is one of those things.
From a reporter’s standpoint, spring ball has always been a useful appetizer at just the right time. Like crab cakes not too close to the meal, with easygoing conversation around it.
Guys are developing football fundamentals without the temperature too hot. Literally. Yet also because it doesn’t feel like you’re in the neighborhood of the season yet. The one percent better each day idea is easier to buy into for players without looking ahead to the games at this point.
And you truly have some hitting in March and April with those younger guys without backing it down too close to the season.
Now, I suppose in fairness to the OTA idea: Some guys who are out in the spring after postseason surgeries that take three to six months to recover from – yeah, they might be back for summer OTA workouts. But it’s not like there won’t be a strength and conditioning runway for them to get their footing in the current setup.
So keep giving these dudes those 15 practices in March and April. I’d think it’s actually a nice reprieve to players from mat drills and all that. Get that taste of football. And get those guys new to your program involved in all that within a few months of having arrived here instead of waiting half the year for it.
“I think that would be a complete and total mistake,” Rhule said Tuesday of moving away from spring ball to just OTAs. “There’s a lot of players here that don’t know how to properly tackle at this level, don’t know how to block at this level.”
Auburn coach Hugh Freeze has been one coach who said he’d rather move to just 10 OTA style practices in June. “I don’t even want spring practice,” he told CBS Sports.
Washington coach Jedd Fisch has been another on record saying the college game should just adopt the NFL calendar. He said when the NFL has its draft in April, college ball should have its portal, basically running from April 15-May 15. And then roll on from there.
Maybe such a change he’s talking about wouldn’t be a big deal. I don’t know until we take a sledgehammer to the next thing. The portal happenings would certainly make for a lot of college football news that spring. But it wouldn’t include real football talk and I worry we’re steering too far from that in a lot of conversations now.
Spring ball at least momentarily centers people back on the stuff between the lines and players trying to climb depth charts.
We’ve already lost the January/February recruiting hot chatter that used to come before the old February signing day. With elimination of spring ball you’re talking about going four to five months where the game is behind the curtain aside from portaling. And portaling is still a turn-off word to some fans.
Rhule was talking Tuesday about the more important part. A crucial five weeks still earlier in the year to hone on the details with players.
“I remind our coaches because several of them have been in the NFL: You coach in the NFL, you train players in college …” Rhule said. “Sometimes you’re taking players from other schools who have been trained for a couple years and training them our way.”
So spring ball still counts for a lot. Heck, it will be pivotal in Nebraska’s case in figuring out the 105. And don’t mistake Nebraska’s lack of a public Spring Game as connecting a lack of a physical spring. The Husker head coach assured that’s not the case.
Said Rhule: “These are still young players that have to become good players, right?”
Add in this thought from Phil Snow in a recent interview with 365 Sports. He mentioned a talk he had with Stephen Belichick, who was the defensive coordinator for Washington last year before joining his dad at North Carolina this year.
“He couldn’t believe the improvement in the players in spring football because they were in pads and actually playing football,” Snow said. “You know, OTAs, you’re in pajamas running around. It’s not football. And so I think it would hurt college football and the development of college players if they take away spring football.”
OK, enough get-off-my-lawn takes from me. Although lawns really need that spring to grow like you want them. Just saying.
I was thinking how the new portal guys *maybe* take a little of the offseason hype – or whatever you want to call it – off the younger dudes who showed promise in 2024.
Take Jacory Barney, for instance. Someone mentioned to me on a radio appearance that we’re not talking about him as much as we usually do a player who had the freshman season he had. He’s right.
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