I posted this on Bucknuts, trying to give some of the board members who had not played football some perspective on the experience that is training camp. Some of it is tied to Ohio State, but really its more about the camp experience that many really can only imagine.
The community members have really liked it so I thought I would put it up here. Also its nice to take a night off from blogging.
Its hard to imagine the experience of double days in the dry heat of the summer for many, but its a substantial and important base for any team’s future endeavors for that year any many to come after.
Let’s first start with the timing of camp. Most football players love the game of football but are honestly still somewhat intimidated at the prospect of training camp. It signals the end of personal freedom and the enlistment into both physical and psychological servitude. 
It usually starts in the hottest month of the year and goes on for 3-4 weeks, most of which is done in full pads in two daily 2-3 hours sessions. Typically team meetings and functions surround these practices so its an entire day of learning, sweating, hitting, running, tackling, and conditioning. Regardless of the condition you are in and how many times you have done it, the heat, the weight of the pads, the hitting, and the team conditioning sucks the life out of you. When camp starts, all other priorities evaporate or lose their significance severely. Whether it be girlfriends, school, employment, or other responsibilities, they all slowly begin to slip to the back burner. Guys libido are even known to dissipate almost entirely.
Hard Knocks did a great job chronicling camp, but the story lines are different at every level. At the high school level, it maybe who is moving down to JV or moved up to Varsity, who didn’t make grades, or gave up the sport because of the depth chart and or the brutal nature of camp. I played with a guy my freshmen year in high school who was very closed to quitting the team as many people had told him that he would be assured a scholarship if he played water polo full time. He had one week of football practice before water polo practice started so he practiced all week with the football team and then mulled the decision over the weekend. He ended up sticking with football, became our captain, earned a football scholarship to Washington State where you may remember him long snapping the ball over the punter’s head for a safety against OSU, and is now the starting tight end for the Arizona Cardinals. At the collegiate level guys are mulling over position changes, red shirting, transferring, taking a medical scholarship, or just coming to grips that their not going to see any significant playing time. Its a tough realization considering the commitment these guys put in regardless that they are on scholarship.
Camp is where ownership of the team is established. Senior captains is the trend and many secondary captains now grab the reigns in motivating the team, keeping them out of trouble, and growing the team’s camaraderie. They essentially have to earn the entire team’s trust piece by piece whether it be during team stretching, team meetings, after hour social events, or during a drill. While Hollywood can over dramatize the importance of player speeches in the huddle, on the sideline, and in the locker room, I can attest that a good captain (one that has the full respect and trust of the team) CAN rally the troops when needed. The base of this trust and respect comes from camp when the coaches, practice schedule, and heat push you to your limits. They’re the guy showing enthusiasm for conditioning, keeping hazing light hearted, dictating the intensity of workouts and drills, and setting a good example of how to deal with coach’s criticism.
Camp is where this year’s depth chart is tweaked, but next year’s depth chart is initially conceptually developed. The amount of reps for the second and third string guys trends down through out the year, so for many younger players this is there time to stand out. A quick look at the depth chart will show that only a handful of positions are truly being contested in any given year, but a solid camp could put you in line for a starting spot next year. Coaches begin to move players around trying to fast track talented players who practice well to positions they are likely to see the field faster. Every positional move no matter how minor is scrutinized by the entire team making each decision and audition at a new position that much more interesting.
Camp is where scheme changes are stressed, new plays are auditioned, and new packages and looks are experimented with. Very rarely do coaches throw dramatic new wrinkles or changes to the team in season, so its their job to cram and perfect all strategy changes to pre season camp. The rumor is that we’re planning on playing more man to man coverage this season. If that’s true, I can assure you that this will be one of the key focuses defensively. Getting the team to “buy in” to a new system or strategy is absolutely critical for that system to be successful. Training camp also serves as the starting point for cliques within the team to form. Sometimes its bad, sometimes its good but its unavoidable. The excruciating physical demands of camp dictates after hours spent of commiserating with your fellow teammates in smaller and more relaxed social settings. Now every sport has something equivalent to training camp, but my point is that training camp is unlike any other pre season practice experience that I know of. All other major sports have a more balanced blend of pre season games to practice time. Football is the only sport where for nearly a month you go full throttle against your teammates in hopes that you are steadily improving. The ends justify the means but along the way fights break out, players are seriously injured, and some players give up the game for personal reasons (I gave up football my senior year of high school due to back issues, in the third week of camp).
It’s hard to really know if you are improving at the pace you hope you are, but a large part of the success that any football program encounters (high school, college, or pro) can be traced to the summer camp improvement. Teams can either close or extend the gap in talent in relation to their competitors in this 3-4 week time frame.
It’s a death march all the way to opening day kickoff and then its downhill from there as the weather cools down, practices become less frequent and less physical, and the excitement of games overshadows the harshness of practice. Its hard to convey on how many levels the next month will be critical for all football teams across the country, but I thought I would offer my 2 cents on just how important of a time this is. Its grueling, intense, larger than life, and exhausting. Teams certainly can hit their stride at some point during the season, but its key to try to go into the first game with momentum, chemistry, camaraderie, confidence, and superior execution that will sustain itself for the entirety of the season.
