College football preseason camps open this weekend at schools across the country, but those camps sure aren’t what they used to be. The evolution to a kinder and gentler preseason has been long and deliberate, but major change often triggers unintended consequences.
Teams are allowed a set number of practice opportunities before their first game. Days before fall classes started were counted as two practice opportunities. Teams had two practices a day and some even squeezed three into a single day. Two-a-days were physically and mentally demanding for the players. Everyone — including players, coaches, equipment, medical and video staff — was in lockdown.
But camp evolved because of safety concerns. In 2001 Minnesota Vikings player Korey Stringer died in camp, a death partly attributed to heat exhaustion. During that era there were other player deaths in summer workouts—not in preseason camp—but the concerns were focused on preseason camp.
In 2002 Dom Capers became the head coach of the Houston Texans and he eliminated two-a-days on successive days; a 2/1 approach. Prior to that, most teams had two-a-days day after day after day.
With public and media attention then focused on the threat of heat exhaustion, Texas head coach Mack Brown and former Baylor head coach Grant Teaff, the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA), took notice of Capers’ schedule. Teaff and the AFCA took the bull by the horns advocating for the 2/1 idea, which became an NCAA rule.
In 2017 the focus on player’s health is now concussions. To lower the toll of repeated hits in a single day, two-a-days have been eliminated nationally this year.
Many old-school guys hate to see two-a-days go away. Camp was tough, but there was a lot of common sense involved. There used to be three days of freshmen-only practices to help them get oriented and coaches knew their teams’ limits.
But what a tough camp filled with two-a-days did for a team was bring it together through shared sacrifice. Players leaned on each other, respected each other and united in their efforts to survive the coaches’ physical and mental challenges. At Penn State two-a-day sessions once started with a 6:30 a.m. practice, including a very early wake-up call administered by an air horn.
For the coaches and players alike, camp forged the steely resolve needed to build a championship team. Like military training, it developed the mental toughness to concentrate and make decisions when they are fatigued, tired and sore. There is only one way for coaches to evaluate mental toughness and that is by stretching their players to the limit.
It wasn’t all misery though. Each day there were small rays of hope. For years at Penn State we had a Coke break in the middle of practice. The equipment staff brought out wooden racks of ice-cold glass 10-ounce bottles of Coke for the players halfway through practice. Some practices even included a popsicle break.
All that aside, the management of team safety was a collaboration of the medical staff and the head coach. They know their teams best and are uniquely positioned to both push and protect their teams. When the team looked tired, our head coach built in a day when he would throw us off the field, “angrily” denouncing us as a team that couldn’t win a single game.
It was premeditated to intentionally get everyone’s attention and focus restored, and it was a way to rest the team. Coaches now cancel a practice and reward them by going swimming, to a movie or bowling. That is a new-school way of thinking, as is the idea that two-a-days should be a thing of the past.
But no change is ever made in a vacuum. Many NFL coaches have noted that the college game has become less fundamentally sound. If basic techniques start to lag further, it may be a consequence of easier preseason camps. We’ve taken some of the endurance built up in preseason camp out of the game. Proper and safe blocking and tackling technique must be developed through fatigue to become habit late in the fourth quarter of tough games. While practices may be safer, the games may be riskier.
Aside from that, these guys will miss some of the best memories of college football. The shared experience of really tough camps amid the fires of August will never be what they once were. It was the worst time of the year, but at season’s end it was always recalled with a smile and a knowing nod that it was vital to success and to the safety of the game.
It was the journey’s steepest climb. But in our society that increasingly values the result more than the journey, when we diminish and make smoother the toughest parts of that path we lose something along that way.
