We are a football-loving society. A football-loving society who, in the month of April, is currently starved for football.
We haven’t seen any competition on the gridiron since the Super Bowl at the beginning of February. We won’t see anything really competitive until the NFL preseason starts in August. And, for those exclusive fans of the college game, the gap in between viewings is even wider.
So we college football fans love our spring games. It’s where we can judge our (and other) teams and see how they look after the seniors have left. We get a chance to see if the new star recruits are ready to step in and if any of last season’s up-and-comers have made the jump and are on the level to play big-time football.
More than that, spring games are fun. The point isn’t always to win. It’s more about who can impress and stand out more than who can actually win. The winning team doesn’t gain anything. No one is watching the games rooting for one of the two teams. People watch because they want to be prepared for how their team will line up this coming season.
Therein lies a danger, though. Because, no matter how well a player can do in a spring game, it’s not a full-out competition. It’s not the same as a game. And, more importantly, you can’t fully compare the team to another team’s talent level when seeing a spring game.
But people do. Far too often, we judge teams on spring games. We see talented players light up the field for a half or more and our expectations skyrocket. Suddenly, campaigns by media and fans heat up. Spring games and fall practices are what get players on preseason watch lists and get teams high preseason rankings.
Let’s take last year’s most obvious lesson: the South Carolina Gamecocks. South Carolina lost a lot coming out of 2013. But a combination of factors–most notably a perceived-as-weak SEC East and the fact that Steve Spurrier is their head coach–led them to a #9 preseason ranking. But we cannot forget the fact that it was an impressive spin on the spring game and fall practices that led the voters to think that a team that ended up 7-6 was a top 10 team.
This is not about the Gamecocks, though. They are just the most recent perfect example of placing too much importance on games that aren’t actually competitive, meaningful games.
Here’s the important point, though. Spring games are important to programs and their fans. They give fans something to follow closely and stay interested in during this tough downtime in the football calendar. And they do generate excitement for teams and programs.
But that’s all they should do. When we let these types of little things get out of hand, we end up with poor perceptions of football teams. The other case-in-point is when Ohio State lost their expected Heisman-contender at quarterback in the fall. They still won the national championship.
We all know that meaningful preseason rankings shouldn’t exist and that they do a lot of damage to perceptions of teams during the season. But as long as we have them, we have to make sure that we don’t let even more information affect these rankings that really shouldn’t.
Enjoy our spring games. Build excitement for the upcoming season. But keep in perspective exactly what it is.
Main Photo:
Main Photo:
