This spring game-against-a-rival stuff is getting serious now.
Spring games have always kind of been hum-drum, let’s face it. The most excitement we’ve ever had is when people upped the stakes a bit and had the losers eating beans and weenies and the winners eating steaks, or when 100,000-plus Alabama fans showed up in 2007 and 2008, in the early years of Nick Saban’s tenure there, to see guys like Mark Ingram and Julio Jones ball out.
There was the occasional autograph opportunity, the chance you might bump into the head coach leaving the stadium, but other than things like that, the very most spring games afforded was talking smack about being right that YOUR guy was better in a intrasquad game.
Now, it seems like since Colorado coach Deion Sanders proposed that – ‘Hey, let’s have spring games against other TEAMS instead of our own guys’ – it’s catching on.
One place it’s catching on is Stillwater, Oklahoma. And one guy that’s got the fever is Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy. Remember about 12 or so years ago his “I’m a man, I’m 40” speech (Mike Gundy’s ‘I’m a man, I’m 40’ rant at Oklahoma State).
Coach Gundy is always good to get things going. And he’s got everyone talking after his most recent suggestion: that his Cowboys take on in-state rival Oklahoma in back-to-back weekends of spring practices, now that the Sooners and Cowboys are no longer conference rivals.
Gundy offered to bring his team to Norman April 12, to replace OU’s normal spring game, and then invited the Sooners to come to Stillwater the next weekend to take the place of the Cowboys’ annual spring game. The Oklahoma State coach also offered to do just one meeting instead, split the proceeds equally and donate them both to the program’s NIL treasure chests.
Right now, NCAA rules prohibit schools facing each other in spring games.
But some schools, like Texas, Nebraska and Ohio State, have cancelled spring games this year, due to an expanded regular season and playoff schedule and a longer season.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Gundy said, of Sanders’ notion that programs scrimmage each other in spring. “We get tired of practicing against one other.”
The Bedlam series between OU and Oklahoma State ended after the 2023 season when Oklahoma left the Big 12 Conference for the Southeastern Conference. Oklahoma State, of course, remained in the Big 12.
That ended a 112-year-old football series.
