USC Trojans and Texas Longhorns Cancel Spring Games: Should LSU Football Follow?

Brian Kelly and the LSU Tigers will begin Spring Camp in early March with the program set to get a better look at the new-look roster in Baton Rouge.

It'll be a stretch where the staff can evaluate the fresh faces via both the NCAA Transfer Portal and 2025 signees that enrolled early in January.

But the recent buzz surrounding college football has been the lack of importance in the final day of Spring Camp: The Spring Showcases.

LSU has their annual Spring Game set for April 12 following the conclusion of Spring Camp, but other programs are taking a different route.

We've seen schools across America cancel their Spring Game already with Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule being one of the first shot-callers to reveal why.

"The word 'tampering' doesn't exist anymore," Rhule said. "It's just an absolute free open common market. I don't necessarily want to open up to the outside world and have people watch our guys and say, 'He looks like a pretty good player. Let's go get him.'"

"I dealt with a lot of people offering our players a lot of opportunities after that," Rhule added. "To go out and bring in a bunch of new players and showcase them for all the other schools to watch doesn't make a lot of sense to me."

It's a new era of college football with bidding wars and open check books luring players elsewhere and Rhule became the first to openly state that, but other coaches have followed suit.

Texas and USC are the most recent programs to cancel their games for various reasons.

Texas Longhorns Cancel Spring Game

Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian publicly stated that the Texas program will not be holding a Spring Game this year.

“Over the last two years we played 30 games. That’s a lot for college football: 14 two years ago, 16 this year,” Sarkisian told Kay Adams in an appearance on “Up and Adams.”

“And I just mentioned we’ve had 25 guys get invited to the NFL combine the last two years, so we’ve got a lot of young players on our roster. We have 21 mid-year high school kids that just showed up. And so the development that’s needed for these guys to get ready for the fall is a little bit different than it used to be.”

Instead, the Texas Longhorns will take more of an "NFL approach" towards Spring Camp in an OTA style.

“Our approach is going to be a little bit more NFL driven. Kind of more of an OTA style early on and as we grow into more of the scrimmage formats in the second half of spring ball, that I just don’t know if rolling the ball out, playing the game, when we only get 15 practices is the best for us to maximize the opportunities that we get,” Sarkisian said.

“So it’s going to be a little bit of a different approach, but I think college football is changing right now. And we need to do a great job as coach of adapting to college football and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

USC Trojans Cancel Spring Game

Lincoln Riley and Co. have also chosen to bypass a Spring Game at the conclusion of Spring Camp.

"The biggest purpose that a spring game actually serves now is a fan engagement tool, and we just we just think we can engage fans in a better way," ESPN wrote.

Florida State Seminoles Cancel Spring Game for Different Reason

Mike Norvell and the Florida State Seminoles have canceled their Spring Game, but for a different reason. Their stadium is undergoing renovations with the program electing to bypass a game this year during the recent changes.

Norvell did comment on the state of college football and changes to spring ball.

"As much as anything, teams can change so much," Norvell said. "I would assume that you're going to see less and less spring games just because of that part of it. You go play a spring game and put whatever information you want out there, and that's going to help somebody that you're playing against. Even if it's just seeing the look of personnel. You can only get 15 days, I don't want to spend a day that's not as productive."

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