Pitt's Pat Narduzzi Adamant on Spring Game

The Pitt Panthers head coach supports continuing the spring game.

Sep 21, 2024; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA; Pittsburgh Panthers head coach Pat Narduzzi takes the field to lead the Panthers in warm ups before playing the Youngstown State Penguins at Acrisure Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images / Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

PITTSBURGH — The Pitt Panthers will host their annual Spring Game, concluding spring practices, but many college football programs have chosen against hosting it in recent years.

The Spring Game allows college programs a game-like atmosphere for their team at the end of the spring semester, as unlike the NFL, there are no preseason games that teams play in before the season starts in late August-early September.

Certain teams decided that they wouldn't host a Spring Game for various reasons, with 19 programs in the Power 4 conferences doing it so far.

Some of these include other teams scouting players at the game, which impacts the summer, with players leaving in the spring transfer portal window.

Teams also run the risk of showing certain plays, formations or personnel that others teams view before they face them in the fall.

Other cases include Texas, who cancelled their Spring Game, after making it to the College Football Playoff Semifinals, which was a 16 game season for them.

Some teams have also changed how they do the Spring Game, goingfrom a normal game format to 7-on-7 drills or skill contests, or competing in other athletic competitions like a slam dunk contest for the fans.

Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi spoke after his team's second spring practice on March 13 and he has no interest in getting rid of the Spring Game, which will take place on April 12 at Acrisure Stadium.

He sees the value in his players going out and playing in a game, doing the draft for which team gets which players and that its a good close for his players' hard work after 15 practices. He also isn't worried about other teams watching his players, with the proliferation available to every coachings staff.

“No, we’re not doing that,” Narduzzi on if he considered cancelling to spring game. “It’s college football, it’s an opportunity for our guys to go out and play in front of people and to me, that’s a whole other opportunity to go show what you have. So, we’re going to have a spring game."

“I think it’s going to be fun. Our guys have fun. We do the draft. We’ll do the draft. We’ll split it up and let our guys go play. We have a lot of guys we want to see for that 15th practice and again, to me, that 15th day to be able to go out and have fun, play a game, a real game. 

"Like practice, they’re having fun today and they had fun Tuesday and they’ll have fun hopefully by practice 10 and 11, by practice 12 and 13, they’re ready for a game. To have another practice, they’d be disappointed, too.”

"I’m not worried about the portal and guys getting recruited and all that. They know who our guys are. They know who they are. They’re going to have video, they have PFF."

Pitt lost 10 players to the transfer portal after their spring game last season, most notably quarterback Christian Veilleux to Georgia State, Dayon Hayes to Colorado and linebacker Solomon DeShields to Texas A&M.

Narduzzi said that there isn't much that the NCAA can or will do about tampering in the sport. He hopes that the House v. NCAA ruling will change things, which if approved, would not only award $2.75 billion in damages to student-athletes over 10 years, it would allow schools to use up to $20.5 million of their own money to support their athletes in college revenue sharing.

“Absolutely nothing. It’s embarrassing,” Narduzzi said. “My fear is just with all the booster and NIL involvement that we have throughout the country, it took a long time to get that kind of under control. Right? 

"I’d say there’s still some teams that were still finding ways to get kids paid, but at least they had to hide and maybe some of these coaches around the country were nervous about it being done. Now, they let the cat out of the bag now and now they got to get it back eventually, hopefully. I don’t know where that’ll go, so the great thing is with revenue sharing and the house settlement on April 7, that’ll hopefully maybe manage some things. It’ll take some time to get things done, but then to now say, “Ho!” on that stuff, good look to you.”

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