Penn State football, led by its new head coach Matt Campbell, officially opened spring practice on Tuesday. Make that Tuesday morning.
Many college football teams hold their winter strength and conditioning workouts early in the morning. (Including Penn State.) But when spring ball hits, they shift their 15 workouts with pads and balls and hitting drills to the afternoon. That’s how Penn State did it for decades.
Not Campbell. And now, not the Nittany Lions. The players all meet early for breakfast, but soon after meetings and preparation they hit the practice field. And then each other.
Campbell started The Early Start during the 2020 COVID season at Iowa State and liked it.
“When we were in COVID at Iowa State, everything went online at Iowa State,” Campbell explained yesterday, when I asked him about the philosophy and physiology behind his penchant for practicing in the a.m. “I just felt like there was so much going on, that the best thing that we could give our players was being with us to start the day. I thought the best thing that our players got was our opportunity to interact with them. And we got their best.”
But when things returned to normal the next season, the Cyclones went back to afternoon practices. Not one of Campbell’s better ideas, he admitted during his spring kickoff presser inside Beaver Stadium — which started at 11:15. “Immediately after practice,” is how the Penn State PR folks phrased it in their media alert.
“As with most bull-headed head coaches, that’s not what we’ve always done,” Campbell shared. “So, we went back to normal in ’21, and I went back to afternoon practice. We slipped academically, and we slipped with our production. It was a major mistake on my end.”
So, Iowa State football went back to early morning practices. It’s a practice that Campbell had remembered paid dividends. Campbell did, after all, earn his degree in history from Mount Union, so he gets the importance of learning from the past. And past mistakes.
“It’s an area for me that I’ve really become convicted on that it is absolutely the best thing for student-athletes,” he said. “I’m really excited to continue that. I think already our guys have come up and said, ‘Man, I really love this morning block.’ We did it this spring just to make sure we could work out the kinks for the fall. But I think those things are really big.”
MATT’S MORNING METRICS
Here are the Top 5 benefits of a morning practice, according to Campbell:
1. TOP OF THE MORNING. “…It gives us the ability to really have a great rhythm to our day. And it gives us the ability to start the day right… Everybody’s day starts the same, and it starts with breakfast, it starts with the opportunity to be in an engaging environment.”
2. BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS. “I think it gives our young men a start to their day, which is huge. It gives them breakfast, gives them lunch after practice, and gives us a chance to reconnect with them at dinner so we could get their meals and see how they eat.”
3. MAKING THE GRADE. “I think two years ago, three years ago now, we went to morning practices in the fall. What I saw — you’re talking the last three semesters in the fall, which we always did afternoon in the spring and in the fall we did in the morning — was our team GPA was around a 3.4 GPA the last three, full fall semesters. “
4. UP EARLY, INJURIES DOWN. “I think we saw injuries significantly decrease because we had the opportunity, they’re not sitting in class and their day didn’t start slow. I think what we got with it is academically (is) you saw everything skyrocket.”
5. EXTRA REST BEFORE GAMEDAY. “…Once you get in the season, with the [early practice] time Thursday you get off the field [in the morning], so our guys physically can be their best by the time they get back on the field on Saturday, whether we’re traveling or at home. I just think it gives you a significant upgrade in terms of refueling those guys and getting them to have their tank completely full by Saturday.”
