Billy Napier weighs in on idea of playing spring scrimmage for charity

Spring games in college football have become a widely discussed concept. This is, in particular, to try and make them more entertaining for fans with the idea of proper scrimmages against other teams getting thrown around a lot. For Florida Gators head coach Billy Napier, this makes a lot of sense.

With Florida’s 2023 spring game rapidly approaching, Napier explained why he likes the idea of making the spring game a scrimmage.

“Yeah, I would have no issue with that,” Billy Napier said. “I would have no issue at all with it. I think that there’d be a lot of positives that come from it, you know, and I’ve heard all the comments out there and I agree wholeheartedly.”

Along with being more exciting for fans, Napier also thinks that the game’s proceeds could go to charity.

“I love the concept of charging admission and giving the money to a charity — I think that’s fantastic. I think that within your footprint, you know I think at the National Football League level, it’s done.

It’s easy to see why coaches would like this idea. It’s hard to get a good idea of how good you are when you only play yourself. Practicing against another team is a great opportunity. Then, for the athletics department, this could offer more money through ticket sales and TV. That’s a huge deal for small schools that rely on buy games.

“And, I think the coaches could come to an agreement about, conceptually, what it looks like,” Billy Napier continued. “What situations you’re going to work. It’d be entertaining for the fans and I think you’d probably get some TV time. It’d be part of it. So, no issue at all.”

Billy Napier on the time of Florida’s spring game

This season, Florida chose to have its spring game at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 13th. That’s a pretty strange time for a spring game, which would typically be played on a Saturday to make it easy for fans to get to the game.

However, Billy Napier has a good reason for the time of the game this season.

“Yeah, the original idea was twofold. It was about avoiding Easter weekend. And then also, you know, we look at the calendar and ‘Okay, we got nine Spring Games that day right here in just our footprint.’ So, you know, we knew we were going to have to compete to get people here, so we moved it to Thursday,” Napier said.

“I thought it went over well, you know, something about that place under the lights. You know, we get a lot of people off work Friday, they make a long weekend and come watch the Gators play. So it’s definitely some recruiting strategy that comes with it for sure.”