Daily Bull 4.9.18: Spring Game Fever

Be careful out there, folks. The Internet is misleading in the best of times in this day and age, and spring football practice time of year poses that extra threat: making you believe that a Spring Game is an actual football-like substance. Look, this happens every time there’s a first-year head coach. Fran’s debut made a huge splash in 2003, filling up Kyle Field to 50% capacity for a scrimmage was unheard-of at the time. Five years later, the buzz around Sherman’s debut was even bigger, as was the ultimate letdown when his structure was revealed to be even less football game-like. Don’t pin your hopes on Jimbo exciting you this weekend: it’s not that he wants you to be disappointed, it’s just that he doesn’t really care what you want.

Oh, it’s fine to consume if you’re prepared and comfortable in the knowledge that you’ll see 10 seconds of action for every three minutes of milling, aimless drill work. Or that plays will stop just a half-beat before they get really exciting, often for no discernible reasons, the players following some unwritten and pre-ordained pact. Spring games are great for some people: students, friends and family of players, various scouting personnel, that guy in your section who gets really amped about the precision of the footwork on a TE dig route (you know who you are), that other guy in your section who already shells out the cost of a mid-sized automobile each year to bring his extended family to every game and therefore decides to go whole hog anyway on the Spring Game because hell why not at this point (we all know who you are), etc. It’s fine in context and in moderation.

But like most things that are fine in moderation, it’s usually no fun at all when consumed that way. If watching the Bama-Georgia title game was mainlining the purest Bolivian powder off a solid gold ingot in a luxurious Swiss mountain chalet, watching spring football is scrounging through the carpet fibers of a meth trailer for enough dirty and discarded crystals to inject into your toe webbing. You’re better off going without.

Now, this website would never advocate the use of hard drugs, nor would we encourage un-Aggie behavior. So we’re not saying that no one should go to the Spring Game. We’re just saying hey, here’s the Spring Game schedule if you want to watch it in small doses on TV so you can flip around to more exciting things like golf or Barefoot Contessa. Gig ‘em, and have a wonderful week.