Michigan Football: Should the NCAA add preseason games?

Michigan football is less than three weeks away (17 days to go) from its season-opening game against Western Michigan (September 4th).  As each day draws the opening kickoff closer and closer to reality, Michigan’s first opponent, Western, got me thinking about scheduling and had me looking towards the future.

Now that college football has been turned on its head because of the super conference news out of the SEC, with Texas and Oklahoma leaving the Big-12 in a few years, a lot is going to be changing soon.

This doesn’t even include the college football playoff expansion in a few years either, which was the second-biggest college football news this summer, right behind the SEC expansion.

So, what’s not a little more college football news, and this time, something beneficial to all parties involved?

The NCAA should create preseason exhibition games

Wouldn’t it be fun to see Michigan football play a game against a great opponent and not have to worry about winning or losing?

Doesn’t it get tiresome to hear the media or players rave about a player during the off-season and you as a fan wish you could see it with your own two eyes?

We see it every year in the NFL. Although the NFL reduced the number of preseason games to three instead of four, it still is football, and a chance to see your favorite players in a tune-up for the regular season.

I’m sure all Michigan football players and fans and coaches (and every other college coach, player, and fan across college football) have grown sick and tired of the same old spring practice and fall camp every single year. Michigan doesn’t even broadcast its spring practice!

The NCAA should add one or two preseason exhibition games for every college football team (that wants it). None of these games would count and it’s just a chance to see the players in action as a tune-up.

They get sick of hitting each other every single day in practice and in scrimmages.
It would be cool if teams could schedule whoever they wanted.

Michigan would have all sorts of possibilities. They could play Alabama or LSU, or Clemson, or Georgia, or Oregon, or Iowa State. Anybody.

Yeah, well, what about the risk of injuries?

The point of the preseason games is to get live-action against guys that aren’t the same faces but also aren’t going 100%. It’s just a scrimmage. Nobody in the NFL (unless they are guys fighting their butts off for the last roster spot) tries 100% in the preseason games.

NFL coaches only put their starters in for a series or two in the first game or two and they don’t play them at all in the last game.

That’s what Harbaugh can do. He and the opposing coach can give the starters like a quarter or two and then put the backups in for the rest of the game.

These backups never know what can happen. They are almost as important as the starters because they need to be ready for anything, injuries especially.

They shouldn’t just be thrown into the fire in the regular season (when it counts) in a crucial moment, having barely played snaps, and be expected to perform well. It takes many reps, even against the other fellow backups of the opposing team. Any reps are good reps.

We’ve kinda seen it with Michigan’s men’s basketball team in the past. They’ve played some exhibition games against other teams in years past. In 2018, they went to Spain and played three exhibition games over a 10-day span.

As you could tell, Michigan men’s basketball greatly benefited from that experience and live-game action against some quality opponents.

Ok, well, where would the teams play?

It would be cool if Michigan and their opponent could find a compromised location. It would be even cooler if, instead of a spring game for both schools, the preseason exhibition game could replace the spring game. 

Fans and the media pack the stands to see teams scrimmage. They don’t particularly care as much about the other drills, like the 1v1 drills, or the agility drills (just like the players) and the scrimmage is all live-action, so it would cut out those other unnecessary drills.

Of course, all of these games would be televised nationally, so fans wouldn’t have to worry about Jim Harbaugh forcing people to actually go to the spring game.

In terms of the playbook, again, just like NFL preseason games, the playbooks for both teams would be very light in complexity.

The entire point of the exhibition games is to give the starters and backup players live-game action, and for the coaches to try new things, and see what the strengths and weaknesses are on the teams without the pressure of the games counting.

If Michigan gets destroyed sometimes, who cares! The game doesn’t count! Just like if they destroyed somebody as well. Fans shouldn’t overreact to it one way or the other.

I think all of these things are reasonable changes that need to happen in college football. A lot of changes are already coming, so adding one or two exhibition games prior to the start of the regular season isn’t that big of a deal.

Too many times we have seen Michigan start out shell-shocked right out of the gate against a good opponent when it counts. The hope is that Michigan would use these exhibition games to keep fine-tune their strengths and lessen their weaknesses.