Hugh Kellenberger

Clarion Ledger

OXFORD — Ole Miss wrapped up its spring practice on Saturday without a spring game.

No really, that’s possible. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it myself, but the Rebels went through a “scrimmage” in front of a few hundred people inside the Manning Center, and that was it. There were no arbitrary sides taken, the SEC Network was nowhere to be found and no “official” stats to be taken way too seriously between now and the Florida State game on Sept. 5 were accumulated. They just practiced for no more than two hours, and then said they were done.

There was no actual spring game because of continued construction at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium (including switching from field turf to natural grass), but coach Hugh Freeze is not exactly upset he missed out on the rite of passage of pretending what happened in spring practice No. 15 means a whole lot more than 1-14.

“I watch some of the ones that are on TV this year and I can’t say that it broke my heart that we didn’t have that kind of game,” Freeze said.

Let's be real here: spring games kinda stink. The coaches do not particularly care for it, and the advent of televising these things only makes them worry about giving away any trade secrets to their opponents. So what we get are bland, uninteresting scrimmages between two sides that know each other's plays and call signals. It does not have to be that way, though, and Freeze has an idea.

“I think we got more out of practicing today than we would have playing a spring game, but I will say again that I’m a proponent of playing another school at the end of each other’s spring practice, charge $5 and give every bit of the money after the travel team gets their expenses paid to a charity of choice,” Freeze said. "I think that we would all get a lot out of that and you can play one on ones, twos on twos, threes on threes and just get a lot done.”

There’s probably a drawback to this, but Freeze has yet to figure it out. Scheduling regional schools would help to keep costs low, and there’s enough around that you could make sure the team is not one on your schedule for the next three to four years.

You’d have to figure out how much of an actual game it would be (Could quarterbacks be hit? How much of your playbook would you run?) but put a bunch of coaches in a room and they’d come out with answer. That process could start in Destin, Florida at the spring meetings, where Freeze first brought up his idea a year ago.

He said the coaches were receptive, but it did not progress beyond discussion. Freeze said he plans to do so again this year, and hopefully try to gain some traction. The coaches would have to convince the Southeastern Conference to sponsor it, and then it would go to a NCAA committee and eventually a vote of the membership.

So even the best-case scenario has this taking at least a couple of years to figure out, but how cool would this be? You could even take it away from campus sites. There is a generation of people in Jackson that fondly remember the days of Ole Miss and Mississippi State playing doubleheaders at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Coliseum. There's too much money to be made for a regular season game to go away from Oxford or Starkville, respectively. But could this be a way to bring it back? The SWAC schools could organize to play on Friday, with a Saturday doubleheader featuring the Rebels and Bulldogs playing a yearly rotation of Southern Miss and a regional school (Tulane, Louisiana-Monroe, Memphis, South Alabama, etc …).

“You can find out more about yourself and I think it would be good for football to give back,” Freeze said. “People would pay $5 to see us play somebody. I don’t want it to be expensive. I’ll tell you what, just make it to whatever you can give — a dollar, 25 cents, 50 dollars — but here’s the charity of choice and come see us play another school.”

It's a fine idea, and sure as heck beats out trying to figure out if Red beating Blue is an upset or not.

Contact Hugh Kellenberger at (601) 961-7190 or hkellenber@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @HKellenbergerCL on Twitter.