I recognize the irony in telling you not to overthink something via the format of a blog post that will be a couple of hundred words. I also recognize the irony of me telling you – or anyone – to not overthink things in general. I recently paced around my house for 10 minutes because I couldn’t decide where to do my nightly doom scrolling.
But I think it’s the lesson that we all collectively need to be reminded of this time of year.
As Penn State wraps up its spring camp this weekend with a scrimmage, it’s your annual reminder not to overthink the performance the Nittany Lions put together Saturday afternoon.
But this year, that reminder comes with a new warning. It’s time to stop overthinking the spring game all together.
Not just at Penn State. Not just this year’s Blue-White game. But across all of college football.
For whatever reason, college football has decided to overthink its spring game, and it needs to stop.
We don’t need to overthink it.
Over the last few years, among the many things moving at a rapid pace in the college sports and, in particular, college football world, overthinking is what seems to be powering – or stalling – college athletics.
Name, image and likeness – something which I’m a proponent of for various reasons – has been thought about way too much on all sides of the spectrum. The transfer portal? Also very overthought. Espionage of both nefarious and innocent intent? Just this week, one of the top threads on both of Penn State’s main message boards is about Connor Stalions. So yes, we’ve overthought that too.
In fact, we have overthought so much that it’s generally hard to keep up with what we’re overthinking next.
And while all of that other overthinking was going on, there’s also been a constant hum of the collective brain of college football coaches pondering what they should do with the spring game.
Penn State can’t wipe its hands clean of that by any means. James Franklin has remarked how he doesn’t want to put anything on tape when new coordinators come in during the spring contest – even when the telecast is largely a commercial for his football program. (And may Bill O’Brien’s wild scoring mechanism live on in our hearts forever.)
Fueling that overthinking is this sense of paranoia. Paranoia that a coach is going to steal plays. Paranoia that a team is going to steal a player. Paranoia that a radicalized fan is going to spend way too much time writing a manifesto that will impress a coach that will open up an opportunity for him to use his unique skill of understanding signals to steal signs to help a team to a national title.
(OK, that last one did happen so it is warranted.)
It’s the same paranoia that fueled Lincoln Riley to ban USC student reporters from practice. It’s the same paranoia that fuels Franklin from letting the media take videos of certain aspects of practice – or the same paranoia that keeps him from sharing player status as it relates to injury.
It’s also the same paranoia that was the spark to start this whole debate that college football has had this spring. When your uncle’s favorite future Penn State head coach Matt Rhule said Nebraska wasn’t going to have a spring game this year because several Huskers were poached in 2024, he ripped open Pandora’s box of paranoia about the spring game.
Soon, other teams followed suit for one disappointing reason or another.
It got to the point where many wondered if Penn State would join that list and to the point where Franklin had to explain that it necessarily wasn’t his choice either.
“I’ve been at Penn State now long enough to understand the impact that Penn State football has other than this entire community. I think everybody is aware of that, right? There needs to be give and take with this. We need to work together,” Franklin told the media this spring. “A successful Penn State football program helps everybody out. Bars, restaurants, hotels.
“So for me to at any point sit here and say we’re not going to have a spring game, I don’t think that would make sense for a ton of reasons. The university schedules a ton of fundraising events around the spring game. A lot of people are in town. It’s like a homecoming for the spring type of deal. So that’s going factor in always into our decision-making process.”
Penn State, as he put it, needs to have a spring game. Or rather the Centre region needs to have Penn State have a spring game. It is, as the coach stated, a legitimate reason many will return to town this weekend, all to spend money on hotels, food and the latest merchandise that is a cornerstone to the area’s economy. Football weekends bring $1 billion per season according to the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau, and shutting off one of those weekends — even if it’s not as big as a regular season game — would be a massive disservice to the town-and-gown relationship.
But let’s also not pretend that any of this is up for debate. The core essence of the weekend, a football practice, is going to always happen.
Penn State still – like all of those other teams – gets 15 practices. That’s 15 opportunities to get better. That’s 15 opportunities that would be a disservice to player development if one were removed. And yes, regardless of how it’s played out, it’s 15 opportunities for a player to get injured.
It’s always been that. And for whatever reason – most driven by overthinking – we’ve all collectively decided this isn’t a good idea anymore? That we can’t televise a spring because we don’t want our opponents to see what plays we might run, even though they can just look at last year’s film, regardless of where a coordinator coached? That we can’t have a spring game offering an opportunity for third and fourth string guys who may never get into a game in the fall to play at Beaver Stadium in front of fans? That we were somehow more worried that an injury is going to happen because there are more people watching the practice?
It’s all so silly.
It’s also the latest example of college football overthinking things.
While it is not the most sacred of traditions in a sport built on them, the spring game is still an essential one. There’s a rhythm to it. It’s a sign that it’s getting warmer even when it occasionally snows on gameday. It’s a signal that it’s time to turn the page on last season – and to move forward into a new chapter.
Fans need it because we’re so football-obsessed. Fans want it because it’s an affordable opportunity to take your family to a game. It provides players with a chance to get meaningful reps. It provides coaches with a free showcase for what makes their programs so great.
And yes, it does provide some of those message board posters with an opportunity to overthink what the upcoming season could be and won’t be, why so-and-so isn’t the right fit as the third-string long snapper and why they’re unimpressed with the ball boy’s ability to retrieve the kicking tee.
But you’re not going to do any of that this Saturday. And the collective we that cares about college football – from fan to coach to player to administrator to chicken basket vendor – isn’t going to be in a tizzy over the future of the 15th spring practice anymore.
Why?
Because it’s time to stop overthinking the spring game.
vs. 