Texas A&M Aggies head coach Mike Elko hits the rest of college football with a much-needed dose of reality
Over the last couple of months, numerous college football programs have made the decision to cancel their spring games. Nebraska Cornhuskers head coach Matt Rhule suggested in early February that spring games provide rival programs with an opportunity to "tamper" with players. "The word 'tampering' doesn't exist anymore," said Rhule. "It's just absolute free, open, […]
Over the last couple of months, numerous college football programs have made the decision to cancel their spring games.
Nebraska Cornhuskers head coach Matt Rhule suggested in early February that spring games provide rival programs with an opportunity to "tamper" with players.
"The word 'tampering' doesn't exist anymore," said Rhule. "It's just absolute free, open, common market. So I don't necessarily want to open up to the outside world. I don't want these guys all being able to watch our guys and say 'Wow, he looks like a pretty good player. Let's go get him.'
Texas A&M Aggies head coach Mike Elko, however, isn't buying that "tampering" is a legitimate excuse to cancel a spring game.
The only legitimate reason that Elko sees for canceling a spring game is if a program played deep into January in the College Football Playoff.
"I think that I would always challenge people to read into what people are saying and try to figure out whether it actually makes sense," explained Elko. "I think there’s two different elements of this. There’s some teams who play real long seasons, and I think there’s a reality to having to redefine what your next offseason looks like with the extended playoff and how many games some teams are playing. I think that’s real.
“This thought of people recruiting off your roster or some of those things, I’m not buying some of that stuff,” said Elko on Wednesday. “So we’ll continue to have a spring game until we make it to the semifinals and then we’ll rediscover kind of what our offseason looks like.”
College football coaches are famous for being overly paranoid these days (more and more programs continue to completely close practices to the media), so it's not a total surprise that some coaches believe that spring games provide an opportunity for tampering.
But the reality is that tampering is going to happen regardless of whether or not spring games exist. Most coaching staffs are familiar with most of the top talent in college football due to scouting players during the recruiting process. If there's a hidden gem out there, he's probably going to be discovered by watching game film, not because a player had a solid spring game against a bunch of backup players.
Spring games are important for college football fan bases. Canceling them with the health of the team in mind is one thing, canceling them because you're overly paranoid that someone is going to steal a player is simply misguided.
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