Iowa State football has been ahead of the times when it comes to plans, or a lack thereof, for Spring Football games.
In 2025, we’ve seen a wave of major college football programs go away from their annual tradition out of caution for the upcoming transfer portal window in April.
It’s been rare to see a spring game in Ames, Iowa, under Matt Campbell, though, and he says that now everyone is “just catching up” to his way of thinking.
“My philosophy on that changed a long time ago,” said Campbell. “Everybody’s just catching up to me.”
Unlike the motivation of some of the other programs, though, Campbell says that his decision not to have an annual spring game isn’t about other teams scouting Iowa State players.
“I’m not scared about people recruiting our guys,” said Campbell. “Shoot, they’ve been recruiting them for the last four years (and) our guys just keep staying.”
The Cyclones will begin Spring practices on March 25, but aren’t focused on finishing out their activities with anything other than making the most of their allotted time.
“I think this year’s unique because we play so early in the year (against Kansas State in the Aug. 23 Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin, Ireland),” Campbell said. “We’ve got to be really smart about what that looks like and I’d say today I’m leaning on practicing and not having a spring game.”
“Believe me, there are some years where I think it’s awesome,” Campbell said of having a spring game. “I think it’s awesome to open up the stadium if it’s a young team that needs to play in front of some sort of a crowd, I think that’s big. But I think we’ll make those decisions kind of based on what this team needs, and I don’t know if I can tell you right now what this team needs until we get back out on the practice field and really evaluate our football team.”
