There was always a good chance that Utah State football would forgo having a traditional spring football game this year.
New Aggies head coach Bronco Mendenhall floated that possibility during his National Signing Day press conference in February, noting the rampant tampering that exists in college football. How to balance the value of exciting fans against the problem of allowing other teams to scout and potentially poach players was a real question.
Friday morning Utah State made the suggestion of a private spring game official, announcing that the program will indeed not be having its annual Blue and White game this year.
Moreover, all spring practices will be closed to the public.
Utah State will have its annual “Football Family Fun Day” in August as part of fall camp, which will be the first time that fans are able to watch the team and interact with the players ahead of the first season of the Mendenhall era.
“After careful consideration, I have reluctantly decided to close our spring practices and not hold a spring game that is open to the public,” Mendenhall said in a statement.
Utah State isn’t the first program to cancel its spring game this year.
The Aggies are one of many making that move as the landscape of college football has changed.
Per CBS Sports, notable programs such as Oklahoma, Nebraska, NC State, Ohio State, Texas, USC and Florida State have all canceled their 2025 spring games for various reasons.
Some, like Nebraska, have canceled their games for nearly identical reasons to Utah State.
“I think it’s really, fundamentally — I hate to say it like this — it’s really because last year we were one of the more televised spring games, and I dealt with a lot of people offering our players a lot of opportunities after that,” Huskers head coach Matt Rhule said in February. “To go out and bring in a bunch of new players and showcase them for all the other schools to watch, that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
Under Mendenhall, Utah State has brought in 41 new players during the offseason, including 21 four-year transfers, 11 high school players and nine junior college transfers.
As a group, the 21 four-year transfers who’ve become Aggies have combined for 385 games played and 96 starts during their careers.
Mendenhall doesn’t want to risk having to rebuild on the fly, after already starting the process of rebuilding the Utah State program. That very situation happened to Mendenhall last season at New Mexico, with numerous transfer portal losses and/or defections coming during and after spring practice.
“My primary intent is both to protect and retain our current roster and to keep our schemes and strategies unknown from our opponents for as long as possible,” Mendenhall said. “I look forward to connecting with Aggie Nation this fall as we wrap up fall camp.”