Alabama football will not have a scrimmage on April 12 for A-Day.
The Crimson Tide still plans to host their annual A-Day event, but it has been adjusted to reflect a practice instead of a controlled game.
Multiple college football programs have opted to take a similar route or have canceled their spring game due to concerns over the health of their players and the transfer portal window in April.
Kalen DeBoer says the transfer portal did not play a major role in this decision for him.
“We’ll have just more of a practice, a full practice like we would have any day and just again allow us kind of what I referred to earlier, be able to have a controlled setting, control just the reps that certain guys get,” DeBoer said. “We understand the significance, and everyone loves football here. We want to give that day and make it available, show off our guys and our guys go do their thing. It’s really, to me, not about the portal concern that I know everyone makes it out to be. It’s just that we’re really careful out there. We ran a lot of reps, but we were very specific and sometimes you almost had to stop things to get the right groups of people, matchups and things like that to have a quality rep for all 22 guys that are on the football field, that that practice type environment is something that I think best accomplish things for the fans that we want to do with the A Day and also for our football team to utilize a practice 15 and continue to get better.”
DeBoer wants A-Day to be a good opportunity for Alabama football’s newcomers to get a feel for playing in Bryant-Denny Stadium.
“I think it’s really important for our guys to get in front of fans,” said DeBoer. “I remember a year ago when we came out some of these this year we got 18 new freshmen and then we also have some transfers that are here and this is their first time in Bryat-Denny with people. So, I think that’s a huge benefit for us. I remember seeing some guys with little bit like, wow, eyes wide open. That’s a huge benefit for us because really throughout the fall and fall camp, we won’t experience that to the extent like we will here in a couple weeks.”
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Justin Smith is the Director of Recruiting for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via @Jdsmith31Smith
