Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian announced on Up & Adams with Kay Adams that Texas will not have an Orange-White Spring Game in 2025. He cited a couple reasons why.

1. Over the last two years, Texas has played 30 games. That's a lot on the body.
2. Texas had 25 players invited to the NFL Combine in the last two years, which leaves a lot of young players on the roster (including 21 mid-year high school kids that just showed up). 

"The development that's needed for these guys to get ready for the fall is a little bit different than it used to be," Sarkisian said. "Our approach is going to be a little more NFL-driven, a more OTAs style early on as we grow into more of the scrimmage formats in the second half of spring ball. I just don't know if rolling the ball out and playing the game, when we only get 15 practices, is the best for us to maximize the opportunities that we get."

Texas is the latest Power Four school to cancel its spring game, joining Nebraska and USC. Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule cited the Transfer Portal as his reason for the cancellation. The NCAA's spring Transfer Portal window is open from April 16-25, which is after most spring games would be held. The spring game, Rhule says, has turned into an exhibit of high-upside players for other schools to poach.

"Last year, we're one of the more televised spring games, and I dealt with a lot of people offering our players a lot of opportunities after that," Rhule said. "To go out and bring in a bunch of new players and then showcase them for all the other schools to watch, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The word tampering doesn't exist anymore."

Two things can be true for why Texas cancelled: as Sarkisian said, they've played a lot of football. As Sarkisian left unsaid, Texas quarterback Maalik Murphy was enticed by numerous schools to enter the Transfer Portal after a stellar Spring Game in 2023, and this could happen to more young players.

"College football is changing right now and we need to do a great job as coaches of adapting to college football," Sarkisian said. 

Former Houston head coach Dana Holgorsen told Dave Campbell's TexasFootball two years ago that the Transfer Portal forced him to rethink spring football. What's the sense in holding a traditional spring football slate with players planning to transfer out and players you'll count on in the fall not arriving until the summer?

"I'll know what my roster is on June 1st," Holgorsen said. "If we finished spring practice (on April 14th), we probably wouldn't even know who's putting their name in (the Portal) until it appeared."