Colorado coach Deion Sanders is lobbying the NCAA to allow him to make a significant change to his team’s annual spring game.
Sanders said Monday that Colorado will hold its annual spring game on April 19, and it will be televised on ESPN2. However, he added that his real wish is to play a spring game against another school instead of staging it as an intrasquad game.
“We got to sell this thing out and pack this thing, because the way the train is going, you never know if this is going to be the last spring game,” Sanders said. “I don’t believe in that. I don’t really want to condone with that.
“I would like to play against another team in spring. That’s what I’m trying to do right now to have it competitive. Playing against your own guys kind of gets monotonous. You really can’t tell the level of your guys because it’s the same old, same old. I would like to style it like the pros. I would like to practice against someone for a few days, then you have a spring game. I think the public will be satisfied with that tremendously.”
Colorado Spring Game will be on ESPN 2 April 19th 🔥
— We Coming 🦬 (@SkoBuffsGoBuffs) March 17, 2025
Coach Prime said he’s working on trying to play another team for the game 👀 #SkoBuffs pic.twitter.com/F8BLkbCz8I
NCAA rules prohibit schools from staging joint practices or scrimmages against each other, so Sanders would need to do some major lobbying to get permission for his idea. However, with college football looking more like the pro game with each passing season, it is something that could be coming down the pipeline.
The other side of this is that joint practices in the NFL can get quite heated, and some infamous incidents have taken place during them. The NCAA would probably be reluctant to risk similar incidents. Sanders is probably right, however, that the public would embrace them.
The future of traditional spring games is in doubt either way, as Sanders alluded to. Some major programs have started to cancel them, in part because of the risk of losing players to the transfer portal if those players stand out in the spring game. Sanders himself has had to deal with that, though that has not dissuaded him from continuing with the game anyway.
