I know a lot of former Alabama football players who likely would wish that their coach, Paul Bryant, had been more like Nick Saban, the current Crimson Tide coach, in at least one way. Spring football practice for Alabama and just about every other college football team was canceled this year, a victim of the coronavirus pandemic. Even if it had not been washed out, though, it would have been different in Tuscaloosa today than it was in the Bryant Era.
In a teleconference with reporters Thursday, Saban explained that he didn’t consider contact in spring football practice to be of particular benefit to players, that he believed the value was in teaching. The heavy dose of contact could wait until fall camp.
To hear Bryant players tell it, spring practice started at midnight after the bowl game and extended until August practice, six hours a day with two-hour scrimmages every two hours. Well, maybe not that dramatic, but the trials and tribulations of spring football practice were of mythic proportions. And, to be honest, it was not a walk in the park, no days in shorts, no time limits. There were days – true story -- when the only liquid was players taking turns sucking on a wet towel. Think about that in these times.
In 2020 there is no spring practice, and there’s nothing Saban can do about that. The players are not on campus. After a spring break that was extended a week, they are preparing to resume classes, but not in Tuscaloosa. As will be common across the nation, Bama football players and all other UA students will be taking classes on line. As for football, the players have some on-line contact with their coaches and strength and conditioning personnel, presumably working out on their own.
With the arrival of summer in a few weeks, the summer break for football players may take on a throwback position – continuing home life and on-line classes and technological contact with coaches and instructions on how to work out at home.
No one can predict the future of contact (social, not just football). Ideally, Saban would like to have “14 days of teaching with our players sometime before fall camp happens. And I’m not talking about having pads on or anything, but just teach – teach systems, teach schemes.”
Saban also said he’d want that prior to the start of fall camp, not just making fall camp longer, which he said won’t “get anybody any more ready to play.
“If you look at statistics historically on concussions, injuries…the most concentrated time that you practice and not play is in fall camp. You have more practices, you have to spend more time on the field. So I don’t know that increasing that is going to be beneficial in getting people ready to play. I think if you could do simulated training programs in the summertime that wouldn’t involve that much contact, or even any contact, that would be just as beneficial at that point.”
A question including “the way it was in your day,” brought a personal history lesson from Saban about his life as a football player “many, many moons ago.”
He explained that Kent State players did everything players do today during the school year – spring practice and an off-season program. However, players were not on scholarship in the summer, and so most went home. His coach, Don James, had each player with post cards providing guidance as to what to do on their own. Saban said, “That involved weight training, conditioning, and some kind of simulated training relative to your position. And you had to fill that out and send it in every week.”
Until this year “changed everything,” players were on campus and the summer workouts were administered by the strength and conditioning staff “rather than,” Saban said, “me running on the railroad tracks back in West Virginia.”