On Thursday morning, Texas football head coach Steve Sarkisian said that the annual Orange-White spring football game won't be played this spring for 2025.
Steve Sarkisian and Texas football are evolving with the new world of college football this offseason
Texas is the latest school to join a growing number of programs for the trend of not having spring games this offseason in 2025. Other big programs, including the USC Trojans and Nebraska Cornhuskers, have also canceled their spring games this offseason.
Sarkisian confirmed the news that Texas won't be holding a spring game this offseason when he appeared on the Up and Adams Show on Feb. 20.
He cited the additional games the Longhorns have played over the past two seasons due to the expansion of the 12-team College Football Playoff and the youth on the roster as the main reasons why Texas won't have a spring game this April.
"No, we’re not going to have a spring game. A couple of reasons why. Over the last two years, we’ve played 30 games. That’s a lot for college football. Fourteen two years ago, 16 this year. I just mentioned, we’ve had 25 guys get invited to the NFL Combine the last two years, so we have a lot of young players on our roster."Steve Sarkisian
Sarkisian has stated that the Longhorns' spring schedule is going to look different than previous years. Texas is going to have more of an NFL-esque schedule for spring ball, including something akin to OTAs for camp over the next couple of months.
"And so our approach is going to be a little bit more NFL driven, 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, I just don't know 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 different approach."Steve Sarkisian
The change to spring ball is one of the many formalities for the sport that is evolving with the expanded College Football Playoff having teams play more games in the postseason. NIL and the transfer portal have also added the element of the spring portal and tampering violations.