Hlas: Football shouldn't be a rite of spring

This makes me a heretic among some of the people with whom I work and associate, but I hate spring football games or pseudo-games.

I seldom like exhibition or preseason anything, in fact. Give me games that count, skip the rest. Any coach who bars the media from practices isn't all bad.

Not that you can't learn things about a team watching their spring games. Yes, you actually can, especially if you're a football wonk. And good for those who do watch and learn and ably communicate what they've ascertained.

Even my untrained eye watched various Iowa players at spring games over the years and thought 'That player's going to be really good.'

Like Carl Davis. And Akrum Wadley. And George Kittle.

And Derrick Willies. Who may be really good for Texas Tech this fall.

But to me, it's a drag. It takes the football off-season, and cuts it in half. The best thing about the period from when basketball ends to when football begins is it's the nicest time of year to live in Iowa, minus the autumn portion that's quite good in its own right. I'd rather have that in one big chunk for psychological reasons, not cut up by a glorified football practice in often-dubious weather.

Nothing about last year's Iowa spring game told me or you the Hawkeyes were headed for 12 wins and a Rose Bowl. Nothing. So why should this year's spell 12-0 or 10-2 or 8-4 or 6-6?

Last year, defensive end Drew Ott basically used unproven offensive lineman Boone Myers as a turnstile, and the assumption was the offensive line would be a disaster area. That opinion was confirmed at the Hawkeyes' Kids Day practice at Kinnick Stadium in August.

Then the O-line did OK once the actual games began. Better than OK, in fact.

My No. 1 question would be if Iowa has a proper place-kicker or punter. It's kind of a significant question. And it won't truly be answered until September no matter what we see Saturday.

But don't mistake this as a completely miserable rant by someone who perhaps is just whining because it means it's another Saturday spent, you know, earning a living. I'm happy to reside and work in a state where spring football isn't the be-all and end-all of the spring.

Maybe it's because our springs are precious and people don't want to leave a Saturday on the table by being a spectator. If that Saturday is nice, that is.

Last year's spring game was played in cold, windy, raw conditions. That made the small crowd excusable more than the 7-6 record the season before. It was 7-6, right? It seems like so long ago now.

But there has never been the insanity for the spring game here as in many other places. Ohio State had 100,189 fans for its spring game Saturday and charged $5 a head. The attendance set a national spring-game record.

That's unacceptable. It's cultlike behavior, and cults aren't good.

The cults are widespread. Georgia had 93,000 for its spring game this year. Georgia!

Nebraska always makes its spring game an event. Nebraska needs events, I get that. (But so does Iowa.) However ... the Huskers are coming off a 6-7 season. Should 72,992 people really have been curious enough to pay $10 a ticket to see that team scrimmage four months later?

Tennessee, 67,027 fans. Penn State, 65,000. Clemson, 50,000. Florida State, 49,913. These are places where football is more powerful than a steaming locomotive. That can't be healthy.

Alabama, coming off a national-championship, had a spring game crowd of 76,212 Saturday. That's an enormous amount, up 11,000 from a year ago. But at least it was only the eighth-largest spring crowd in Crimson Tide football history.

Throw in Auburn's 45,723 on April 9 (a $5 admission) and it's 121,935 people in the state who went to spring games. Maybe some went to both. Wait, it's Auburn and Alabama. No one went to both other than spies for each side.

Iowa State announced a crowd of 15,089 for its spring game last Saturday. That frightens me. What would the Cyclones draw if they were coming off a 9-4 or 10-3 season? Hawkeye fans, please spare us the 'They'll never know' comebacks.

The lone encouraging spring game news came from Stanford and its powerhouse program. The gathering for its spring game on April 9 was an estimated 2,500. Why it was estimated, I have no idea. How long does it take Stanford-educated people to count to 2,500?

It speaks well of Cardinal Nation, which surely doesn't call itself Cardinal Nation. Of things to do on a spring Saturday in the San Francisco Bay Area, a college football spring game wouldn't rank in the top 2,500.

Stanford didn't play Christian McCaffrey in that game. It knows what he can do. We all do.