Auburn head football coach Hugh Freeze is on Matt Rhule's side on the college football spring game debate. Freeze believes the annual April exhibition tradition is obsolete, and dangerous for a program with the transfer portal so prevalent.
"I do think the days of a spring game where you're televising that and the portal opens the next week that just doesn't make much sense. I think those days are over," Freeze said on Tuesday, per ABC 33/40.
Rhule was the first prominent Power 4 coach to complain about spring games leading to players entering the transfer portal.
"The word 'tampering' doesn't exist anymore," Rhule said in February, per ESPN. "It's just an absolute free open common market. I don't necessarily want to open up to the outside world and have people watch our guys and say, 'He looks like a pretty good player. Let's go get him.'
"I dealt with a lot of people offering our players a lot of opportunities after that. So you go out and bring in a bunch of new players and showcase them for all the other schools to watch? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
"Guys are being compensated now, and you're putting money behind some people, a whole other set of parameters. Yet, at the same time, you have to get good. Honestly, to me, it's about protecting the roster and protecting through that portal period."
On the other side of the coin is Deion Sanders, who is aiming to keep the spring game alive in Boulder, Colorado. Coach Prime's Buffs are negotiating with Fran Brown's Syracuse Orange for a game in April.
Freeze went with the times and modified A-Day to include an open practice and an alumni flag football game.
Time will tell if his and Rhule's side, or Sanders and Brown's, will be seen as conducive to their programs' future successes.