Isn't it supposed to be Spring?

It is only fitting that following a winter that no one in Boston will forget, the first Boston College "open scrimmage" was filled with snow. The team started things early just to avoid the worst part of the scheduled storm. With the bubble down, the forecast becomes a much more important part of the planning process.

According to Adam Kurkjian, all three QBs looked green. But how much of that was jitters, the conditions or just young QBs getting the kinks out?

Based on some of the pictures, it seems like the weather kept most of the fans away from the new event.

Football Spring Scrimmage pic.twitter.com/TyWeoxybJ8
— WZBC Sports (@WZBCSPORTS) March 28, 2015

You cannot read too much into any of this. Even just measuring the Marketing aspect, I don't know if you can really compare this to a traditional Spring Game, since the schedule got tweaked and the weather was so bad. Let's hope it helped recruiting. I don't know if this will make Bates rethink future Spring Games, but it did help Addazio's argument for an indoor practice facility.

Why the Spring Game will always be a problem

BC cancelled their annual Spring Game. While they buried it in the announcement of their open scrimmage, the traditional Jay McGillis Spring Game will not take place in 2015. This is the second time in three years the game has been called off (the 2013 game was cancelled in the wake of Marathon bombing). At this point I don't know if it ever will or should held again.

Ideally the Spring Game is a capstone to spring practices and a fun day for fans and recruits. For a variety of reasons the BC Spring Game never draws a crowd and never generates much excitement with recruits. For a school like BC it makes sense to have a smaller, more intimate event -- like the open practice -- that allows Addazio to show off his team to the constitutes that matter and not explain away an empty stadium.

As much as I want the Spring Game to become a real event, I don't know if it ever can at BC. We have a few inherent challenges that will always create problems.

-- The University Schedule
BC has an early Spring Break and an extended long weekend at Easter. On some years Easter is quickly followed by Patriots' Day. Those breaks disrupt the flow of practices. Programs are only allowed a certain number of practices. With two long breaks annually (and a third thrown in most years), coaches have to decide to start practice early or late. If you start early the Spring Game is cold. If you start late, you get better weather for the Spring Game but kill practice momentum due to breaks at Easter and Patriots' Day.

-- The Weather
We've had some nice spring game days in the past few years, but the weather remains a crap shoot. BC can never really plan on a great spring day and the fans are always going to wait to see the weather before they turn out in droves.

-- The roster limitations
We are always going to lack an army of walk-ons who fill out spring games across the country. Throw in the inevitable injuries and each spring BC doesn't have enough players to field two 'teams'. That leads to convoluted offense vs defense formats that the fans cannot really understand.

BC is not the first school to cancel their Spring Game. I don't know if this will be permanent. If no one misses it and recruits like the new concept, then I have no problem trading out the Spring Game for an annual open practice. Sometimes new traditions are better than old ones.