Things that get me to football: Spring Football

This is a quasi-regular feature on things that help me make it from the BCSCG to Labor Day weekend and the start of callllllllage footbawl season.

Spring football practice is kind of a mystery to me. I don't know when college football teams started having spring practice sessions or when people started caring so much about them. But I do know that the whole thing has gotten so out of control that ESPN has started televising practices and intrasquad scrimmages.

King Football has become so big that the spring game has started to become a hot ticket. Alabama sold out its spring game two years ago. Tickets to Nebraska's spring game started popping up on eBay last year.



And yet, it's another one of those things that college football fans look forward to as much as the regular season, along with signing day and the first day of fall practice. I know a lot of Hokie fans who will tailgate for the spring game as if the Hokies were playing Miami instead of themselves.

What amazes me about the popularity of spring football is it isn't like baseball's spring training, which runs right up to the start of the season. After spring practice, we still have five months of dissecting before college football kicks off. It's a unique phenomenon.

However, it does allow us a taste of what's to come. Hokie fans were excited about Brandon Dillard after last year's spring game until he torn his Achilles' tendon in July. They'll be just as excited to see how Ryan Williams does in this year's game. OK, fine, I'm looking forward to seeing Williams in action, too.

Spring football gives us a taste of what we've been missing and what we can look forward to. In college football, hope springs eternal.