From CFP final to Blue-Gold Game, Notre Dame football tweaks its approach to spring practice
SOUTH BEND — As college football bluebloods Texas, USC and Nebraska revamp the spring-game concept in favor of skills competitions and fan appreciation festivals, Notre Dame football holds the line for now.
The 94th edition of the Blue-Gold Game is set for April 12 at Notre Dame Stadium, but that doesn’t mean coach Marcus Freeman and the Irish will arrive there in the usual fashion. A 16-game season that ended on Jan. 20 in Atlanta with a loss to Ohio State in the national championship game still looms large in Notre Dame’s rearview mirror.
Spring practice opens on March 19 and nine scholarship players already know they won’t be participating as they recover from surgeries: Jordan Botelho, Ashton Craig, Davion Dixon, Cooper Flanagan, Kahanu Kia, Chris Terek, Boubacar Traore, Chance Tucker and Jalen Stroman.
Four others coming off surgery will be limited to modified activity, in the parlance of Notre Dame’s sports performance staff: Anthonie Knapp, Cole Mullins, Will Pauling and Billy Schauth.
Ten more projected 2025 regulars fall into the category of individualized spring plans: Josh Burnham, Bryce Young, Drayk Bowen, Jaylen Sneed, Leonard Moore, Christian Gray, Adon Shuler, Jeremiyah Love, Aamil Wagner and Jaden Greathouse.
For the latter group, head athletic trainer Rob Hunt said recently, that could mean “some restrictions on impacts, some restrictions on running, and that’s going to be dictated by how they’re doing but also what the structure of the practice would be at that time.”
Total snap counts from the 2024-25 season, the longest in program history, will be one factor, but other elements of the recovery process will be considered. Just as grizzled defensive linemen Rylie Mills and Howard Cross III sat out portions of spring ball a year ago in the interest of “prehab,” so too will many of the aforementioned players.
“It doesn’t mean they’re injured in any form,” Hunt said. “It’s just a planned approach for them to have individualized development plans so that they get the work they need to prepare for the fall but also not burn out all their tread on their tires.”
Potential changes to Blue-Gold Game for Notre Dame football
Notre Dame’s spring game dates to 1929 and was the brainchild of legendary coach Knute Rockne.
Pitting returning players against outgoing seniors and other recent graduates, the exhibition helped build funds and momentum for the move to Notre Dame Stadium, which opened in the fall of 1930.
Rebranded as an old-timer’s game in 1937, the Blue-Gold Game continued with that concept for another three decades. Ara Parseghian altered the format in 1968 to an intrasquad scrimmage, and it has stayed that way ever since.
Streamed live in recent years on the Peacock app as part of Notre Dame’s long-running television contract with NBC Sports, it’s possible the Blue-Gold Game will be tweaked again.
Asked recently about potential changes to the format, John Wagle, Notre Dame’s director of sports performance, noted a decision would fall to Freeman, athletic director Pete Bevacqua and deputy AD Ron Powlus.
“But I can say from our lens within sports performance, we’re very careful there that the goal of practicing football isn’t to not get injured or some other ancillary thing,” Wagle said. “The goal of practicing football is to improve our team and to prepare for football in the fall. We take every practice day that we’re afforded very seriously because of that opportunity for development.”
Rather than the traditional 15 practices this spring, including the Blue-Gold Game, Wagle suggested the total remains fluid, somewhere between the listed 10 practice sessions and the usual 15.
“Our role is really to maximize those opportunities for our coaches,” Wagle said. “Our approach is: Let’s figure out the way that we can get the most football in while also individualizing that player’s development process and focusing on maybe some other areas that downstream, if we take a longer-term approach, are actually going to yield a better version of that player.”
Philosophical shifts in spring games at other national programs
The timing of the 10-day spring transfer portal window, which runs from April 16-25, was never mentioned during Wagle’s recent news conference.
Nebraska coach Matt Rhule, however, cited tampering as a key reason for the Cornhuskers scrapping their spring game and going to a 7-on-7 event and Pro Bowl-style skills show on April 26.
Texas coach Steve Sarkisian downplayed tampering in the Longhorns’ decision to hold a fan appreciation day on April 26 in place of a spring game.
While Notre Dame has 19 newcomers this spring, including 13 midyear freshman arrivals, Texas must indoctrinate 27 new players, including 22 freshmen, after reaching the CFP semifinals.
“I’ve got 27 new faces on my roster that I need to take time to develop,” Sarkisian told reporters. “The challenge for us as a coaching staff is to grow quickly. We have a talented football team, but we have some youth and inexperience.”
Texas plans to curtail some of its team periods in favor of extended individual periods. Controlled scrimmages will still be part of what Sarkisian termed “a little shift philosophically.”
Winter conditioning at Notre Dame featured staggered starting dates as the Irish faced Ohio State in Atlanta on Jan. 20, a week after the start of the spring semester. Between offseason surgeries, academic responsibilities and recovery plans, director of football performance Loren Landow had a rotating roster of participants and a sliding scale of data points.
“We had a unique and wonderful situation where we had the playoff,” Wagle said. “Throughout that playoff you’re accumulating work to ready for those games that would usually be allocated to the offseason. We were really fortunate to have that work allocated to trying to win a national championship.
“When we looked at what we usually do in the spring and what we thought our players needed to be well adapted for the fall season, you take that playoff workload in mind. We looked at the totality there and structured practices accordingly to try to still get them that total volume of work that we’ve seen year over year since Marcus has started that readies them for fall camp.”
Conversations with Freeman and his coaching staff, including new defensive coordinator Chris Ash and associate head coach/running backs Ja’Juan Seider, helped Wagle and Co. “narrow the funnel” for 100-plus players. It helps that Ash isn’t planning an overhaul of Notre Dame’s defensive approach under predecessor Al Golden.
“We have a lot of momentum to build off, and that momentum is going to be a more individualized approach to the way we develop our student-athletes,” Wagle said. “We have taken a look at not only our data within sports performance but also conversations with coaches on what they believe the priorities are in learning about what these players really need to reach their full potential.”
Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for the South Bend Tribune and NDInsider.com. Follow him on social media @MikeBerardino.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame football vaults into spring with a new plan in mind
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