Curt Cignetti wants players approaching spring practice with ‘great sense of urgency’
Indiana football coach Curt Cignetti talks about how he defines progress for his position groups and players during spring practice:
- The Big Ten Network aired Indiana football’s spring game in 2024.
- Ohio State will be only team to have spring game before the spring transfer window closes on April 25.
- There were a growing number of Big Ten teams this season that opted not to have a public spring scrimmage.
BLOOMINGTON — The only chance for Indiana football fans to see the team’s annual spring game will be in person on Thursday night at Memorial Stadium.
The Hoosiers will scrimmage at 8 p.m. — the offense will face off against the defense using a modified scoring system for a half — and it won’t be broadcast on Big Ten Network as it was last year.
Big Ten Network airing only a handful of spring games
The viewing options for Big Ten football fans this spring are sparse. Ohio State was the only Big Ten that broadcast its spring game before the transfer portal opened on Wednesday. The spring window runs through April 25th.
Michigan’s spring game is on Saturday, but will be broadcast on a tape delay after the portal window closes. The Big Ten Network has the spring games for Maryland (12 p.m.), Rutgers (2 p.m.) and Oregon (4 p.m.) on its schedule for April 26.
On Thursday night, the network will air a women’s lacrosse game between Michigan and Northwestern during IU’s spring game.
Many Big Ten teams joined growing trend of canceling spring games
Iowa, Illinois, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska and USC are among the teams that opted not to have a public spring exhibition. Nebraska coach Matt Rhule explicitly cited concerns over the transfer portal when he outlined his decision back in February.
The program’s spring game in 2024 drew 60,452 fans.
“The word ‘tampering’ doesn’t exist anymore,” Rhule told reporters. “It’s just an absolute 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.”
While other Big Ten coaches acknowledged Rhule’s point, some teams cited scheduling issues while others like USC coach Lincoln Riley told reporters it was a better use of his team’s practice time not to hold a public scrimmage.
“The negative to the spring game is now these get broadcast all over the place, so nobody wants to do anything schematically that they’re going to do,” Riley said. “And so you end up spending a day or two days just to get ready for the spring game, and then a spring game where you’re going to be limited on what all you can do.”
Minnesota moved away from having a more traditional spring game last year to avoid having to cancel or move the event indoors if there was inclement weather.
“We’ve set some up, and I know our fans get disappointed when we have to either cancel it or bring it inside. That was our main reason for canceling the spring game,” Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck told reporters. “We’d have 75 degrees … and we’re having a great time, and then boom, a foot of snow all of a sudden … that’s the main reason we did, because it was just too hard on the calendar, and I was tired of our fans being really disappointed.”
Illinois coach Brett Bielema also cited scheduling reasons, but his were tied to the various construction projects going on at the stadium.
