One proposal that has been floated by Colorado head coach Deion Sanders is to hold a joint spring exhibition and practice against another school in the spring.
Syracuse head coach Fran Brown answered the call and the two have been working toward making it a possibility by submitting a waiver to the NCAA to hold the event in Boulder. It’s unclear if it will occur, but the idea is something that is interesting for a lot of different reasons.
“If you’re going to have one, that’s a way to make a little money,” head coach Rich Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez, who isn’t necessarily for or against the idea on the surface, believes that the competitive nature of coaches could be an issue in that type of setting. Therefore, if it did occur, there would need to be certain parameters set in place to make it more of a scrimmage-type situation.
“Where we’re going to play everybody,” he said.
Rodriguez acknowledges that the event would be one that fans would enjoy but like most things in the current transfer portal era there are risks as well. Some college programs have elected against holding a spring game at all to avoid dealing with some of the issues that could arise by showcasing players.
“You don’t want to show somebody out there and he does really good that day and then somebody poaches him and pays him after the thing,” Rodriguez said.
Currently, there are two transfer portal windows in college football with one in the winter and then another that opens April 16 this year and will remain that way for 10 days. Rodriguez, like many coaches in the industry, is a proponent of eliminating that second opportunity and instead holding just one window.
If that change, which has been proposed by the American Football Coaches Association, is one that is under consideration and would make it so only one window from Jan. 2-12 would be open for players.
If that was approved, Rodriguez is much more agreeable to the idea.
“I love the model, especially with the roster being reduced down to be able to practice against somebody else for a couple days like the NFL does,” he said. “The NFL has got it figured out.”
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