Chris Del Conte reveals how Texas will replace spring game after cancellation

Although Texas won’t host its traditional spring game this year, the football program is planning a replacement. The school will host a “Fan Day” on April 26, athletics director Chris Del Conte confirmed.

Conversations about changing spring practice started during the season, Del Conte said during a town hall Wednesday night. That was after Steve Sarkisian went to him over the summer and pointed out the changing college football landscape. As the College Football Playoff expanded, so did the length of the season.

Ohio State and Notre Dame played in the national championship this past year – their 16th game. However, if either team played in a conference title game, it would’ve been a 17-game season. Previously, the maximum would be 15 games under the four-team CFP, and Sarkisian wanted to find a way to prepare for a longer year.

“I love the spring game,” Del Conte said. “It’s a way for us to watch the new kids. But this was actually … last summer at [the] head coaches retreat, he me aside. He goes, ‘If we are fortunate to be playing Jan. 20, that’s going to be 17 games. A normal season is 12.’ I sat there and didn’t think about it. I said, ‘Coach, you’re right. A normal season is 12. If you’re lucky, a 13th game. Think through the length of a schedule.’

“And he says, ‘I’m going to treat this season completely different. I’m gonna try to platoon as much as I can, I’m gonna try to rest as much as I can. We’re gonna try to live up to that long year.'”

During the 2024 season, Del Conte said Sarkisian approached him about transforming Texas’ spring practice. With so much player movement with the transfer portal – coupled with playing football until mid- to late-January – he wanted to go more toward the NFL model. Sarkisian spent three years in the league as an assistant with the Oakland Raiders and Atlanta Falcons during his career.

That set the table for the change toward Fan Day. It will be the same day the spring game would’ve been, and although he understands the excitement to see Texas players such as Arch Manning, many of the elements from the traditional spring scrimmage will still be there.

“Steve came to me and said, ‘I think we’re going to go to OTAs,'” Del Conte said. “‘We’re going to look at how we do spring ball differently because we’re trying to win a national championship. I’ve got 25 new kids. We’ve got to get them into our system. We’ve got to we got to coach them up, we’ve got to figure this out.’ And at the same time, we brought that entire roster back that played so much football – 16 games.

“So we are not going to have a traditional spring game, but we’re going to have Fan Day. Think about SEC blowout. Think about Bevo, about what we do. We’re going to try to have an incredible – we’ll still have the Fire Sale. We’ll do all the things we’re going to do. We’re going to have interactions with our student athletes, but it will not have a traditional spring game. Y’all okay with that? Understand the rationale why? I hear you, ‘Just win.’ But I know people are like – we’re all jacked up to see Arch, buddy. We’ve got enough of that, you know. Our appetite has been whistled, but we got so many young guys, I can’t wait. You can see the rest of them.”