A year ago, Lane Kiffin turned spring football into a spectacle of hot dog contests, golf cart races and tug-of-war championships, embracing chaos and fun over any meaningful football.
Outsiders may have thought it was just another classic Kiffin move, college football’s great showman thumbing his nose at tradition yet again. But there was a clear motive behind the move, and as spring football in 2025 approaches, it is now obvious Kiffin and Ole Miss were ahead of the curve.
In a college football landscape where paranoia reigns supreme, with alleged transfer portal tampering and NIL-driven poaching at an all-time high, the future of the once-beloved spring game is in doubt. Nebraska’s Matt Rhule has all but confirmed his program will ditch its traditional spring game in favor of a closed format, citing the very same concerns Kiffin anticipated. Other programs are now quietly mulling similar moves, as coaches weigh whether publicly showcasing their rosters is worth the risk of losing players before the season even begins.
Kiffin saw this coming before most. His 2024 spring event minimized any football takeaways while maximizing entertainment, turning what used to be a dry scrimmage into a viral marketing tool for the program. There were no depth charts for fans and media to overanalyze, no full-contact game for opposing staffs to scout, no disgruntled backups counting reps on the sideline and no vultures watching on television, wondering what it would take to lure away any standouts. In short, Kiffin took the safest route possible while still putting on a show.
For years, spring games served as a chance to build hype, get top recruits on campus, give fans a sneak peek, and, in some cases, sell optimism before the fall. They’d serve as an early barometer of how much the fanbase was bought into the new coach, with 92,138 Alabama fans attending Nick Saban’s first spring game and 93,000 for Kirby Smart, Saban’s protege, first spring game at Georgia in 2016.
Now, they’re a liability. Texas learned the hard way in spring 2023 when Malik Murphy’s strong showing in the Longhorns’ scrimmage led to tampering from SEC programs. They managed to keep him with NIL dollars, but he still transferred to Duke after the season. Rhule, among the most vocal critics of the portal’s current landscape, has seen enough to consider scrapping Nebraska’s spring game altogether despite 60,452 fans attending last year’s, the fourth-most in the country. He’s not alone.
Kiffin, ever the innovator, didn’t just avoid the problem — he embraced a solution that might soon become the new normal. Coaches might not go full Kiffin and roll out Joey Chestnut to dominate a hot dog-eating contest, but many will take steps to avoid exposing their rosters in the way spring games traditionally have.
There is still value for television networks like ESPN to broadcast spring games especially when there’s a particularly compelling story like perhaps an eight-time Super Bowl winner now coaching college football. FOX last year televised its first spring game, traveling to Columbus to preview what ended up being the 2024 national champions. It’s a way for the sport to get national television coverage during an otherwise quiet time period, though ACC and SEC schools also have an option to do an all-access show on the ACC and SEC Networks, respectively, if they don’t want to televise a traditional spring game.
The days of packed stadiums in Columbus or Tuscaloosa for glorified scrimmages might not be entirely gone, but the trend is moving toward secrecy, not transparency.
A year later, Kiffin’s words ring truer than ever: “Really, the value of spring games, in my opinion, is overrated.” Turns out, he was just ahead of schedule.
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