Tennessee Vols HC Josh Heupel appears to be against one popular college football idea
Tennessee Vols head coach Josh Heupel didn't explicitly say it on Saturday afternoon, but his comments strongly suggested that he's not in favor of a popular college football idea that's gained some steam over the last few weeks. Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze recently became the latest prominent college football figure to suggest that […]
Tennessee Vols head coach Josh Heupel didn't explicitly say it on Saturday afternoon, but his comments strongly suggested that he's not in favor of a popular college football idea that's gained some steam over the last few weeks.
Auburn Tigers head coach Hugh Freeze recently became the latest prominent college football figure to suggest that spring games should be replaced with spring exhibition games.
The idea is that one of the "cupcakes" on the regular season schedule could be moved to the spring. And then that game could be replaced with a "better" game on the schedule (perhaps another Power-5 game).
On Saturday, after Tennessee's Orange and White game, Heupel was asked if the spring game format should be changed.
Heupel didn't say yes or no either way, but his comments indicated that he would be against the idea of playing an exhibition game because his concern would be keeping his players — specifically his quarterbacks — healthy.
“I don’t know what the right thing is," said Heupel. "For myself, making sure we’re taking care of our quarterbacks as we come out of spring ball would be something I would want to make sure happens.”
Heupel places a big importance on keeping players healthy (Tennessee's top four wide receivers were held out of the spring game on Saturday, though Heupel said three of them would've played if it had been a regular season game).
If there was ever a vote on changing the spring game format, I imagine this is how most coaches would feel (even Freeze, despite his comments about wanting to change spring games).
We already know that college football coaches want every edge they can get. I can't imagine they'd be ok with exposing players to significant injuries in April (even more so than what we see in a normal spring game).
Ultimately, I'd be very surprised if there's ever a change to the current format.
