After a year’s hiatus, the Texas Longhorns spring game is coming back in April. Last season, coach Steve Sarkisian cancelled the annual fan event. The scrimmage and fan day will take place April 18.
Texas Athletic Director Chris Del Conte announced the scrimmage comeback at a Texas Athletics Town Hall. The announcement was met with applause from the audience from the gathered crowd.
“Not too sure how the spring game is going to go,” Del Conte told the group. “We have a lot of young bucks. I talked to (Head Football) Coach (Steve) Sarkisian yesterday at lunch and he goes, ‘Yeah, we’re going to give it a go.’ It’s going to be awesome.”
The spring game has been a Texas tradition for decades. The traditional culmination of spring practice, the Orange-White game has been a chance for the players to put into action all of the things they’ve practiced over the two weeks of drills. It’s also a chance for fans to get an early peak at the team.
The 2024 Longhorns played an incredible 16 games thanks to the SEC championship game and a deep college football playoff run. That’s the most in school history. Now that players are getting paid, the decision was made not to put any of those valuable commodities at risk.
Steve Sarkisian said potential tampering by other teams trying to poach UT’s players was not the reason for skipping the spring game last season.
Appearing on Up & Adams in 2025, Sark explained his reasoning.
“A couple reasons why,” Sarkisian said. “Over the last two years we played 30 games. That’s a lot for college football. 14 two years ago. 16 this year. And I just mentioned we’ve had 25 guys get invited to the NFL combine the last two years, so we’ve got a lot of young players on our roster. We have 21 mid-year high school kids that just showed up. And so the development that’s needed for these guys to get ready for the fall is a little bit different than it used to be.”
“Our approach is going to be a little bit more NFL driven,” Sark continued. “Kind of more of an OTA style early on and as we grow into more of the scrimmage formats in the second half of spring ball, that I just don’t know if rolling the ball out, playing the game, when we only get 15 practices is the best for us to maximize the opportunities that we get. So it’s going to be a little bit of a different approach, but I think college football is changing right now. And we need to do a great job as coach of adapting to college football and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Ohio State, Nebraska and USC all cancelled their spring games last season. Both the Buckeyes and Cornhuskers will bring the game back this season. USC has yet to make an announcement.
The game has always been a fan favorite. Fans line up outside of DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium for the event that has a game day atmosphere.
This article originally appeared on Longhorns Wire: Texas Longhorns to bring back ‘Spring Game’ after one year absence
Reporting by Trey Luerssen, Longhorns Wire / Longhorns Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
