Spring Games or Final Scrimmages?
A look at how teams across the country cap their annual spring practices
One of Army former head coach Rich Ellerson’s most popular ideas was holding the 2012 annual spring game at Fort Benning, Georgia, where the team was divided into an Infantry Team and an Armor team and played the game in front of an enthusiastic group of local soldiers and Army fans with the players giving their jerseys to soldiers selected from the audience after the game. A followup game planned for Fort Hood the following year was canceled in the after-match of congressional budget battles and sequestration. Given a choice, most fans would surely prefer that kind of game atmosphere, and teams like Ohio State can attract as many as 100,000 spectators for their spring games, and get away with charging fans for tickets.
So we know that many fans were looking forward to a Black & Gold Spring Game played under game conditions and perhaps some are disappointed to hear that Head Coach Jeff Monken changed it to a situational scrimmage with the offense running plays against the defense using a scoring system. Of course, we defer to Monken to know the pulse of his team at this juncture of spring ball and what set-up will add the most value, both short and long term (2016 football season).
Are Army fans the only ones being “deprived” of a traditional spring game where the team is divided into two squads to play a game with regular scoring? GoBlackKnights.com took a look at spring “games” across the country to seek an answer to that question.
The Four Playoff Teams
All four teams that participated in the playoffs for the national championship played a traditional scrimmage game with two teams consisting of both an offense and a defense. Michigan State boasted that they drew more fans to their spring game than rival Michigan, a first for them. Oklahoma modified their spring game slightly by holding the first-team offense out from full contact. A Sooner reporter opined “it was for the best, but it failed to provide a typical spring game look at what could be a national title contender in 2016.” Despite limiting contact, the Sooners attracted more than 42,000 fans to the game.
They Do Things Different Out West
Last year, the PAC12 restricted the amount of full contact practice sessions, similar to, but not quite as restrictive as restrictions imposed by the Ivy League this year. We wondered how that philosophy spilled over into their spring games, and we weren’t surprised to find a trend away from the traditional full contact games. We didn’t look at what every team was doing, but at least 4 teams dropped the traditional game format in lieu of a relatively low impact practice.
Jim Mora at UCLA held “a beefed-up practice featuring 11-on-11 and 7-on-7 drills with very little contact to preserve the health of his players.”
Washington was another team that opted out of the traditional spring game. The Huskies ran more of a practice with “some fun competitions for the fans to see.”
A reporter described USC’s televised spring game as "a low-key affair featuring situational live-hitting periods that weren't scored. Sure, some viewers who wanted an all-out game watching at home weren't happy. But who cares. This isn't about them. It's about what's best for USC right now.”
A reporter from the Stanford Daily wrote “It’s a sad reflection of the lack of fan interest in the Cardinal & White Spring Game that the annual scrimmage was moved to Cagan Stadium (the soccer field) this year instead of being played at Stanford Stadium, as it has been in years past.” The low scrimmage drew about 2100 fans, but as the reporter noted, “David Shaw has no incentive whatsoever to show rival coaches what wrinkles he has up his sleeves for this upcoming season, he’s not going to play-call like he would in a real game; instead, he’s just going to call the bread-and-butter, day-one plays that don’t really have much entertainment value.”
Utah is not a west coast state, which may explain why BYU stuck with the traditional spring game, but they had to be a bit innovative in their approach due to injuries. Kilani Sitake, the new head coach at BYU says “We want to play a game format and make it exciting for the fans and for the team. With a limited number of offensive linemen available, we determined a way we could do that was to have our offensive line play for both offenses.”
Three Different Approaches In North Carolina
Army plays two teams from NC this year; so we we took a look at three teams from the state to see what they did this year.
Duke opted for a 70 snap situational scrimmage to wrap up their spring practice.
Wake Forest held a traditional spring game with a couple of fun twists. Rather than dividing the team in the traditional manner of pairing the first team offense with the second team defense and vice versa, the coaching staff let the players choose sides, like an old sandlot game. The first and second team quarterbacks were appointed captains and allowed to “draft” their own teams from the spring roster. Another interesting wrinkle was stakes involved in the outcome. The winning team got their choice of medium, rare, or well done steaks, while the losers ate hot dogs.
North Carolina faced a situation very similar to Army West Point when injuries during spring practices prevented North Carolina from holding a traditional spring game. Instead they conducted an offense-vs-defense-style scrimmage. "We had to run the scrimmage the way we ran it because of some injuries at certain positions, and we weren’t deep enough to be able to split into two teams and play a true game. That’s why we did it the way we did it, and we still thought we got a lot out of it.”
What About Other Upcoming Opponents?
GBK took a look at how Army’s other 8 FBS competitors closed out their spring practice.
Temple finished its 2016 spring practices with its annual Cherry & White Game, battling in front of over 3,500 fans in an offense versus defense competition. Temple held a street fair in conjunction with the final scrimmage. In a scoring scheme that was unexplained, the offense beat the defense 35-25.
Rice appeared to have played a traditional spring game, with the Blue defeating the Gray 30-17, but the we watched the highlights and noticed that all the offensive players were on the Blue team and all the defensive players were on the Gray team.
Buffalo apparently planned to stage a regular game, but later announced that “Due to the roster size, Saturday's scrimmage will feature the offense versus the defense in various game-like situations.”
UTEP has apparently done away with their spring game the last two years and replaced it with a final scrimmage with stats kept for only portions of the practice.
North Texas completed their first spring practices under new head coach Seth Littrell with what was described as “more of a scrimmage than a game, with the Green team made up of the offense and the White team made up of the defense. There were no punts or kickoffs.”
Notre Dame opted for the traditional Blue and Gold game, but not without some concerns. After the game, Coach Kelly commented “you know, any time you break up a squad and you feel like there's some areas where you're a little bit thin in terms of personnel, you always are concerned about how you're going to get through the game, but I thought it went extremely smooth. Just checked with our trainers, nothing serious, no injuries that are going to cause any concerns. A couple of ankles, maybe a hamstring here or there, but nothing from an injury standpoint, so that's always great in the spring game.”
Air Force doesn’t like to reveal much about what goes on in their spring practices and they didn’t do much PR to get fans to attend their spring game, which was a fairly routine 1 hour scrimmage, with most of the established players held on the sidelines. Calhoun doesn’t list his freshmen on the roster; so for die hard Falcon fans, it was a chance to see their plebe class for the first time. The Falcon mascot was there and the Air Force cheerleaders were on hand to sign autographs.
Navy appears to have abandoned scrimmages and weekend practices altogether. They were the only FBS team that didn’t have a spring game listed on the ESPN schedule, and they held all their practices on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 4PM. Navy had to delay the start of their spring practices due to a late winter storm and ended up holding only 14 of their 15 allowed practices.
So You Want to Know The Score?
We can all understand the final scores for traditional game-situation scrimmages, but what about the scores kept for offense vs defense scrimmages? Different teams use different scoring systems for those scrimmages, and as the Stanford reporter noted the Cardinal used “a scoring system so pointlessly convoluted and confusing that even after three years of having dealt with it, it still takes me a few minutes and lots of head-scratching to figure out why the defense is getting 2 points instead of 3.”
North Carolina got its scoring system when a member of the staff visited the Seattle Seahawks a few years back. The Tar Heels use the scoring system each day to determine a winner in practice. Despite just five traditional scoring plays, the final score of their final scrimmage had the offense winning 74-70. Don’t you wish your defense could score 70 points? We thought this sounded more like a UNC basketball score. How would this compare to Temple’s final scrimmage score of 35-25? Do the winners eat steak and losers eat hot dogs?
So what can we learn from seeing the score of an offense vs defense scrimmage? Probably not much, but if the players and coaches like it, who are we to complain? Forget about the score and enjoy the game.
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