The latest trend sweeping the college football world appears to be the diminished importance of the annual spring football game. As schools move closer to putting the traditional spring games to rest, Penn State fans may be wondering what could eventually happen to the annual Blue-White Game in Happy Valley. The good news is, for now, the game for 2025 is still on as scheduled. But after 2025, the outlook is anyone’s guess at this point.
Penn State announced back in December it will hold its traditional spring game on April 26. At that point in time, it felt like routine to just assume a school that holds one of the most well-attended spring games to lock in a date for sometime in April. But since Penn State’s announced date for the Blue-White Game, the discussions about spring games around the country have grown with concern about whether or not the spring game should even be played.
It is not necessarily a player safety concern that is igniting these talks, but concern about roster preservation in the era of the NCAA transfer portal and the influence of NIL.
Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule made headlines with his openness about concerns about playing Nebraska’s spring game and potentially showcasing his players for other programs who may take advantage of the transfer portal to address needs on their own rosters. In recent days we have seen Texas announce the cancelation of its spring game and USC and Ohio State each confirming changes from a traditional spring game setup.
Penn State head coach James Franklin said earleir this month there were no plans to drastically change the approach with spring practices (although he did acknowledge the changes to some winter workouts), but he did suggest the program may make some tweaks to the actual spring game.
“You know, I do see us making some modifications to the spring game,” Franklin said a couple of weeks ago in a winter press conference. “We will still have the spring game, because I know what it means to this community and the hotels and the bars and the restaurants and the tailgating and all of it. We’re working on that now. We may do some more events that we’re still working through. I don’t want to speak on them too early.”
“I locked my date in for the spring game a while ago because there’s so many things at the university that are built around the game in terms of development, fundraising, you know, all types of events that the university has,” Franklin explained at the time. “So, we don’t have a whole lot of flexibility there.”
Of course, the value of the spring game is diminishing in the eyes of college football coaches around the country, even at schools that tend to bring in some of the biggest crowds. Nebraska’s spring game historically is among the leaders in spring game attendance with a consistent 70,000+ fans expected to fill the stands in Lincoln. Ohio State has been among the nation’s leaders in spring game attendance as well.
Penn State is typically among the spring game attendance leaders as well. Could that be about to change? Only time will tell for sure as the entire sport of college football is evolving to depths never seen before, and not necessarily all for the better of the casual college football experience.
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This article originally appeared on Nittany Lions Wire: With schools canceling spring games, what is the plan at Penn State?
