Spring football games have become so in flux that there’s now a spring game tracker out there just like a transfer portal tracker and a coaching changes tracker.
The recruiting website, On3, is keeping tabs of those of Power 4 programs.
In the SEC, Texas and Missouri aren’t having spring games, Alabama is holding a modified spring game, Oklahoma a “combine,” and Ole Miss a “Grove Bowl Games” for the second year in a row.
Florida State’s is off due to stadium construction which is the same reason for Missouri not holding one. Ohio State and Nebraska are not having spring games either.
Georgia football coach Kirby Smart didn’t pin himself down one way or the other on Georgia’s G-Day game when the Bulldogs opened spring practices Tuesday.
Oh, Georgia has a scheduled date of April 12 for its third and final scrimmage of the spring. For now.
There’s a narrative that players jumping into the transfer portal after spring practices is a reason for some of them going away.
“There’s a lot of coaches that didn’t like the spring game before the portal ever came about,” Smart said before the team’s first practice Tuesday. “Everybody has different approaches. My approach has been I like to have spring football games. But that’s — every year we make that decision based on where we are. We haven’t even practiced yet. So, you know, it would be remiss if I said 100 percent I’m dead set we’re having a spring game. I leave every option open.”
Georgia will hold 15 spring practices in the more than four weeks of spring practices.
The spring game usually wraps it up.
“That’s my 15th practice,” Smart said. “So, we can do what we want to do. We’re planning to have a spring game. I’ve talked to (athletic director) Josh Brooks about it several times. We’ve had a conversation. But that doesn’t mean it can’t change. Last year, I think Kentucky didn’t have any defensive linemen healthy. They weren’t able to have a spring game. So, there’s – I mean, we don’t know. Like I can’t forecast the future to know exactly what’s going to happen 15 days from now. I do know we have to get better, and we’ve got to practice football.”
Georgia practices three times a week with scrimmages usually on the last two Saturdays prior to G-Day.
“We want to try to get recovery and stay healthy so we can have really good practices,” he said. “But I like spring games. I want to have a spring game. I think it’s important because you allow kids to play that don’t typically get to play. You sometimes allow fans to enjoy an experience in Athens that they normally wouldn’t get. But I’m not ready to say that it’s 100 percent.”
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Kirby Smart wants a Georgia football spring game, but it’s not certain
