There’s a prevailing thought in college football at the minute that spring games are a bad idea.
The reason why makes sense, too. Coaches are getting paranoid that the spring game not only offers fans an opportunity to see the young players that they have coming up through the program, but it offers the same opportunity for rival recruiters.
In the era of NIL deals and instant transfer portal moves, the spring game can become a great way to get a good young player poached from your team. At the very least, that’s the thought behind several big-time programs like Nebraska and Texas cancelling their games this spring.
And then there’s Dabo Swinney at Clemson, who has always marched to the beat of his own drum.
“Canceling the spring game ain’t gonna stop tampering,” Swinney told the media on Monday at his spring press conference, according to Chapel Fowler of “The State”.
Swinney’s point is that anyone who is trying to scout his players to get them to potentially transfer has all the information they need already. As he sees it, spring is a valuable time for coaching his players and developing a team chemistry that will culminate in the fall.
“You don’t get better football if you don’t play football,” Swinney said. “Now, if you told me we could have two or three preseason games in the fall, I’d probably have a different approach to the spring. But we don’t get that, right?
“There’s a reason why in the NFL, they’ve also got (three) preseason games to play football, to figure their team out. … We don’t get that. We play LSU. So I look at our scrimmage opportunities as an opportunity to expose our guys, teach them.”
Clemson kicks off the regular season hosting LSU on Aug. 30, so Swinney is right, there is not much time to get ready for that kind of game.
In the meantime, the advantages of playing scrimmages outweighs the disadvantages when it comes to the recruiting trail — even with there being a transfer portal window opening up in mid-April.
“Ain’t nobody gonna go look at the spring game and go, ‘Oh yeah,’ ” Swinney explained. “They’ve got PFF … They’ve got everything on everybody already.”
