It must be tough to be a college football coach on summer vacation.
They have to sit in their air-conditioned homes and hope that their seniors and other team leaders are putting the team through the “voluntary” workouts necessary for the team to be in shape by the time camp rolls around.
The meticulously controlling coach has to hand his team over to strength coaches and scholarship players and hope for the best.
“I’ve always found it interesting that, as a coach, you’re responsible for all their actions yet you’re not allowed to meet with them or be around them,” said Texas Tech coach Mike Leach during a Monday teleconference with Big 12 coaches. “I think the contradiction there is a little ridiculous.”
Of course, for a team that owns the title of being the best of the best, year in and year out, the coach doesn’t need to worry about penalizing players who were lazy over the summer.
“I wouldn’t say a player is penalized” for missing a voluntary workout, Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops said. “I would say that, in the end, they realize they’re not going to be capable of playing if they’re not here all summer because someone else will take their place.”
Leach said it’s not up to coaches to discipline the players who took a few too many afternoons off in the summer heat.
“Guys drop on the depth chart because other people develop ahead of them,” he said. “If the other guy is working out and somebody’s not, and somebody develops ahead of him, well that’s his fault.”
But summer conditioning is now over.
As of yesterday, we’re past preseason camp, too.
It’s officially game week in college football.
In locker rooms across the nation, nausea brought on by too many up-downs and two-a-days has officially been replaced with the nerves and restlessness that come in the days leading up to opening day.
The season opener is coming “way too fast for me,” said Kansas State coach Bill Snyder, who will be coaching his first game since retiring after the 2005 season. “As coaches you always want more time.”
Paul Rhoads, the first year coach for Iowa State, said he is both nervous and excited to lead his Cyclones onto the field for the first time, which he does Thursday.
“We’re tired of hitting ourselves,” Rhoads said. “At the same time, as we cross the t’s and dot the i’s, we wish there was a few more hours [before kickoff].”
Perhaps Art Briles, the Baylor coach, said it best when he said that around this time of year, “The football season gets on you.
“It’s always in your mind; you spend all your time in preparation for it, then it hits,” he said. “As a coach, all we spent the past two months doing is talking, planning and doing all this delivering of thoughts and ideas. And finally, that’s kind of out the window.”