Be sure that your coffee or cereal or Pop Tart or whatever is fully swallowed before you read the following interview Jim Grobe conducted with Heather Dinich.
At most college football factories, the summer months are spent "giving 110 percent" and "finishing the job" and other things that end up as rallying slogans on T-shirts. At the close of spring practice, coaches spend considerable time emphasizing the importance of remaining on campus and sacrificing and laying the groundwork for a special season. Summer workouts are about as voluntary as jury duty because, well, guess who is in charge of the depth chart?
It's different at Wake Forest, better known as Switzerland. Brace yourselves for the murderous routine Grobe has set forth for his charges this summer as stated in this piece by Dinich.
Leave in mid-May.
Relax. Have Fun. Do what you want to do.
Come back in early July refreshed and ready to work.
I'm trying to imagine the reaction if a coach at, say, Clemson or South Carolina or Georgia or Alabama, outlined such an outrageous plan. I guarantee you there'd be folks calling for Dabo Swinney to be fired on the spot if the tried to pull that stunt.
But it would never happen at places where football is followed with religious fervor, so there's probably no use even wondering. I wonder if anyone up in Switzerland even raised an eyebrow when Grobe said this:
“You talk about keeping kids in class 12 months out of the year,” Grobe said, “that’s a tough thing.
“There’s some benefit to kids having a chance to go spend some time with their families, and if they’ve got a vacation planned or whatever -- a lot of times the guys go with each other. But they just get away from us. I think it’s good for them not only to get away from their coaches, but get away from being in class all the time, be able to sleep in a little bit, wake up late. You might work out at 10 o’clock today, and 3:30 tomorrow, however you want to do it.”
Now I'm sure the reaction from some of you is some mix of the following:
1) Thank the Lord we didn't hire this guy back in 2007 or 2008;
2) No wonder the guy only won three dang games last year.
But there's more than a shred of reason in what Grobe is doing, and it's worth talking about. Just last week, in an interview with Tigerillustrated.com, Terry Don Phillips voiced a strong sentiment that these kids need to be given their lives back instead of essentially working full-time football jobs 12 months out of the year.
So much of high-level competition is about outworking the other guy and finding every conceivable edge. That's basically how we've gotten to this point of year-round workouts; if everyone else is doing it, then it's hard for a coach to see the benefit of backing off for one month out of the year.
It hasn't always been this way, of course. Back in the 40s and 50s and 60s, college football players usually left for the entire summer and worked jobs.
As recently as the 1980s, two of the most prominent quarterbacks in this state's football history did what normal people do over the summer. Rodney Williams waited tables at nights in Columbia and spent his days hanging out with his buddies on Lake Murray. Todd Ellis was a bartender at Myrtle Beach, and I'm guessing he had a bit of a blast.
It's reached the point now that there's an outcry if a player chooses to work out in his hometown over the summer instead of remaining on campus with everyone else. Aaron Kelly comes to mind, as do a few others.
For all the derision of Grobe and dismissal of his philosophies in the wake of two bad seasons, the man still carries some pull with me. He went 28-12 from 2006-08 and won an ACC title at Wake Forest, for crying out loud.
This isn't a call to go back to the old days, or for football players to spend their summers lounging on the beach. After all, a significant number of these guys actually want to get better and are more than willing to spend time during the summer achieving that objective.
But everything is so copy-cat among coaches that I'm wondering what will happen if someone at a major school takes a page from Grobe's book and decides that the benefits of stepping away and refreshing outweigh the benefits of slogging through May and June boot camp ... which precedes July boot camp ... which proceeds August boot camp ... which precedes the season ... which precedes winter boot camp ... which precedes spring practice ... and then all over again.
It's hard to envision any of this reversing course because there's way too much money at stake, and the concept of amateurism has long since been rendered laughable.
But it'd be fascinating to see the reactions among the coaching fraternity if someone won big a few months after letting their players act like, you know, normal humans for a summer.
LW
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