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The black beads of the practice field turf were still stuck on Craig Fitzgerald’s knees and legs when he took a seat inside the players’ lounge of the Lasch football building.
His khaki shorts slid high above his thigh, and he had ditched the blue cap that he wore backwards moments earlier when conducting a 5:30 a.m. full-squad conditioning workout.
This is the image of a subdued Craig Fitzgerald, one in stark contrast to him leaping over a hurdle and belly-flopping on a mat dressed in shorts and a T-shirt on a dark and chilly February morning.
Looking for a more accurate portrayal of Penn State’s new strength and conditioning coach? Wake up at 3:30 a.m. and meet him at Lasch. He’ll be there working out and going through his regimen before he runs his players through the gauntlet.
“I like to get it over with it,” Fitzgerald said. “Not because I’m disciplined, I just don’t want to do it later. So after a long day of lifting weights on these guys, I don’t feel like doing it, so I just come in. It wakes me up a little bit.”
Once he’s awake, it’s full-go for the players.
Stations were set up across the practice field for the team’s 5:30 a.m. workout. Tuesday and Friday are hard conditioning days for the full squad, followed by upper body work in the weightroom. Monday and Thursday are linear speed days followed by lower body work.
Friday’s workout also saw the debut of a new toy of Fitzgerald’s, a blue disc with two handles.
It’s called The Tug.
“You can’t hide from The Tug,” Fitzgerald told the group.
An offensive and defensive player each grabs hold of the disc and pulls. The offense tries to pull the disc across the goal line and the defense aims to pull the disc past the 10-yard line — all while being surrounded by the rest of the team hooting and hollering for their guy to spare them from extra conditioning work.
“It’s about competition,” head coach Bill O’Brien said. “There’s a lot of spirit and enthusiasm and that’s what Fitz does. I wouldn’t say it’s 100 percent buy-in, but we’re getting there.”
Fitzgerald’s weight room is undergoing renovations. Save for a few weight machines and dumbbell racks and benches, there’s a lot of empty space in the middle of the room. By May, Fitzgerald hopes to add 24 more stations for power cleans, squats, deadlift lunges and flexibility circuits.
It’s a completely different training philosophy than the H.I.T.-style used by Jeremy Scott and John Thomas, the speed and strength coaches from the Paterno era.
“It’s not new to me,” O’Brien said. “This is why I brought him here.”
Fitzgerald arrived at Penn State after previous stints at South Carolina, Harvard and Maryland, where he worked with O’Brien.
O’Brien’s voice was hardly heard during Friday morning’s workout.
“It’s not a race,” O’Brien said, interrupting a lunging drill. “He’s not speaking German, right? Everyone knows what he’s saying.”
Fitzgerald was the only coach with a whistle. He ran from group to group, overseeing the direction of his recently completed staff.
He barked out some orders, bent over and flung his arms in the direction he wanted his players to cut, causing his own shirt to flap up.
And soon after that, the moon still in the sky and the first orange rays peeking over the mountain in the distance, Fitzgerald’s hoarse voice signaled a day’s work.
“It probably sounds lousy all the time,” he said. “It’s always that way. If you’re coaching hard, that’s the way it sounds. If I had a good voice, I don’t think I’d be earning my check too much.”
O'Brien Completes staff, Hires Charlie Fisher
Charlie Fisher has been hired as Penn State's quarterbacks coach, O'Brien confirmed Friday morning, completing the nine-member coaching staff.
Fisher, who will start work Saturday, was most recently the passing game coordinator and quarterbacks and wide receivers coach at Miami (Ohio). Before that, he spent nine seasons at Vanderbilt, where he coached former first-round NFL draft pick Jay Cutler.
"I’ve known him for a long time," O'Brien said. "He's a bright guy, sharp guy, had a lot of success coaching good quarterbacks. We’re lucky to get him."
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Nate Mink
Nate Mink covers Penn State football and news for StateCollege.com. He's on Twitter as @MinkNate.
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