Colorado and Syracuse won’t scrimmage together this spring, after all.
Despite the pitch from Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders and the quick social media acceptance from Orange coach Fran Brown, the two sides were denied a waiver for a joint spring game, the Division I FBS oversight committee announced Friday.
Denying a joint scrimmage is a blow to spring football, which has otherwise become nerfed in importance nationally as major schools cancel their games with coaches hoping to make it through spring without a major injuries and transfer defections.
The NCAA’s explanation mostly focused on timing. Most schools already planned their spring practice schedule and didn’t have the opportunity to match Colorado. The Buffaloes would have a competitive advantage in recruiting for their spring game that other schools would lack. The NCAA also brought up academic concerns, which is important but always funny reasoning in the 2025 revenue sharing and NIL landscape.
Those are all workable roadblocks into the future, and the oversight committee said as much in a memo obtained by The Athletic.
“The committee agreed to discuss, during a future meeting, a concept that could permit joint practices.”
There seems to be growing support for the idea.
Houston coach Willie Fritz told CBS Sports earlier this spring that he’s tried to get the idea implemented “for years” to compete against other teams in spring ball.
“You’ve got a 50% less chance of guys getting injured,” Fritz said. “I think it’d be something that’s neat for the crowd to see. You could probably use to help your collective as well. I think it’d be awesome, good for both teams. One year they go to your place, the next year you go to the other place. I think it’d be something you’d get even more crowd support from.”
Within the last 10 days, Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy suggested a Bedlam spring scrimmage against OKlahoma and Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire pitched a joint practice with regional opponents like Texas, Texas A&M or Oklahoma.
Still, there are potential hurdles to the idea, even beyond the oversight committee’s stated concerns in denying Colorado.
Some coaches worry behind the scenes about exposing their players to further injury in a more competitive setting. Similar worries about potential transfer portal poachers remain, a concern Nebraska Matt Rhule cited in canceling his spring game.
Another potential issue — lawsuits.
Joint spring scrimmages would assuredly be televised, money-making entities. Players are going to want their share of those profits. While spring practice participation is built into many NIL and revenue sharing contracts, adding what is essentially a 13th game to the schedule for players will assuredly lead to renegotiations, sit outs or even lawsuits in a sport where nothing is collectively bargained.
Very little is simply implemented in this era of college sports. Joint spring practices won’t be any different. Yet a shift in that direction feels more necessary than ever given how stale spring games have gotten across the country.
We’ll see if the NCAA and its conference partners can manage to make it work by this time next year.
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