MORGANTOWN, West Virginia — A few weeks ago, Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze made headlines when he made a very interesting suggestion regarding college football spring games.
Freeze, who is in his first season at Auburn, said he would like to replace spring games with exhibitions against other college teams. “I’m going to cry again for the solution,” Freeze said. “The solution is: Allow us to scrimmage somebody in the state. Another team. I think everybody would get out of it exactly what they want.”
“To me, it makes too much sense not to do it, but I haven’t heard any traction for it,” Freeze said.
As evidenced in yesterday’s Gold-Blue Spring Game, it’s essentially a wasted day for everyone involved; the coaches, the players and the fans. Scrimmaging against another team would be more exciting and would make more money for schools. Like Freeze said, it almost makes too much sense to not do it.
Justin Walker, host of YouTube’s popular show “Couz’s Corner”, recently released a video suggesting that West Virginia should play against Marshall as a preseason exhibition in a video titled “West Virginia Football Spring Game FIXED.”
In the video, Walker argues that the exhibition would be great for both schools for a number of reasons. “You’ve got fans out there who want West Virginia and Marshall to be playing each other every year because they’re the only FBS schools in the state. It gives that crowd what they want by letting them play in a scrimmage. You have the crowd of primarily West Virginia fans who say we have nothing to gain by playing Marshall in the regular season. Well, you play them in a scrimmage and it’s not hurting the program in any way, shape or form.”
Walker continued: “You play the game in a neutral site where there’s no debate on where you play the game. You can play it at Laidley Field in Charleston, which holds about 18,500 people. You split the gate fees, let each team pick a charity to give the money to, solves multiple problems and brings the state together and makes a spring game a lot more exciting for everyone. It gets the fan bases excited and it’s good for the state.”
Check out the full video below:
