What's the BYU Football Team Been Up to?

This is—in my opinion—the hardest part of the year.  The only thing good about the months of January, February, and March were the mid-week Wednesday breaks. We always got Wednesdays off. Unfortunately—or fortunately—this is no longer the case, with this year's team lifting and running on every single day. Past teams had the comfort of a silver-lined—Wednesday—week. Who's to say what the silver lining is anymore?

Another benefit to this time of year was the players' opportunity to be in control and to decide, collectively, what their team identity could become. Coaches (aside from strength coaches) are not allowed to be present during these workouts. It’s up to the players to decide and declare. 

If this part of the year was successful in building team chemistry, then the summer became that much more productive, and the season was a success. This is the time of year where you learn a lot about your individual teammates. You learn who is man enough to take on tremendously difficult physical tasks, who you can respect and expect to give their all.

Most of all, this is the time of year where you learn who you can trust to get the job done and NEVER EVER QUIT!

I have two vivid memories of winter conditioning. 

The first is the RB stairs. The stairs are fun because you get some really weird looks from the students as they walk by to go to class. Occasionally while running the stairs a player will take off his shirt, mostly because it is suffocating, but also some dudes love to show off their freshly shaven man bumps—no specific names, but one rhymes with Hen Trittel.

This evokes three distinct responses: the looks from the intrigued co-eds; the looks from the Zoobies—“Why do football players not have to dress modest like the rest of us?”; and finally the look from coach Jay Omer—no phrase to go with it, just one ornery cuss giving you the scowl.

My other memory will be of gassers. I will never forget coach Bronco Mendenhall’s first day as a head coach when we went to the IPF and ran 24 gassers—one gasser is comprised of running the width of the field four times, or approximately 200 yards. We had to make them all under specified times, and there were guys puking all over the place. This was his first test as to who wanted to play for him or not. 

Another gasser memory is that there are always sandbaggers—guys who just like to squeak in under time. They all thought, and probably still do to this day, that nobody really noticed, but everyone knew who the slackers were. These same guys are the ones that on the last gasser had all sorts of stored-up energy and “were in such good shape” that they always won the last gasser by like 15 yards.

Then Coach Mendenhall had a grand idea. The winner of each gasser was done for the day. Funny thing is, those sandbaggers couldn’t even win one at all, not even in the beginning. Ah, the memories!

I have been hearing good things from this group, and I hope they are taking full advantage of this time of year. I hope they are declaring right now as to what kind of championship team they will be. This is the start of the next season. This is the first step in accomplishing all the goals they have.

By Markell Staffieri