Jedd Fisch on spring games: Don’t know why teams ‘waste’ opportunity

The Washington Huskies have wrapped up their second spring under head coach Jedd Fisch. That included hosting a spring game, despite several other programs around the country and in the Big Ten backing away from them.

After the spring game, Fish was incredibly happy with how things went. He’d reflect on the spring game and explain that Washington wanted to make their game entertaining and balance that with improving as a team.

“I thought it was great,” Jedd Fisch said. “I loved having the music playing throughout. I thought we had a really good turnout of people. It gets bigger. It gets more fun. I think we continue to add new parts to it, to incorporate the gymnastics teams, to incorporate the two soccer teams, to have Mike [Penix Jr.] fly in, to have Donald [Butler] fly in, to be able to let the non-kickers kick, and we were trying to get Big Logan [Sagapolu] and Geirean [Hatchett] to field some punts, but there were no punts in the fourth quarter.”

Among the Big Ten schools to cancel their spring games were Nebraska and USC. Cornhuskers head coach Matt Rhule attributed potential tampering with the Transfer Portal set to open as a major factor. Several other coaches pointed out similar circumstances. Then, coaches like Steve Sarkisian at Texas pointed out the length of their postseason runs. Despite all of those arguments, Jedd Fisch wondered why teams wouldn’t embrace an opportunity to improve.

“We want to keep growing it. We want to make it a celebration of spring football. We also want to be able to get better while we’re doing it. So, to me, you go and play a two-hour game. I don’t know the total amount of snaps but there were probably 85-90 snaps. There were interceptions, there were touchdowns, there were tackles, there were fumbles, there were a lot of things you could coach off of,” Fisch said. “And I don’t know why anyone would want to waste their 15th practice and not be able to coach off of it.”

The reality is that practice time is severely limited in college football. Spring only allows for 15 practices in total. So, time is limited, and different coaches are going to want to use that time differently. As of now, it would appear that Jedd Fisch believes hosting that scrimmage is the best way to use that time. So, it’s not leaving Washington soon.