Penn State Football: Mid-Camp Paintball Excursion Looks All Kinds of Awesome

It's been a rough offseason for Penn State, there's no denying that. And while the Penn State players are at least in camp now, that's hardly a respite, and anyone who's ever gone through two-a-days knows exactly what we mean.

There are lots of words to describe preseason camp. "Fun" is not in that dictionary.

So it's great to see Bill O'Brien take the opportunity here in the middle of August to give his team a change from the rigmarole of training camp and, according to Yahoo! Sports, send them off to play paintball.

Seriously.

The decision actually makes a bit of sense even from a coaching perspective. Like football, paintball is a high-stress, high-stakes situation where teamwork, coordination and communication are absolutely crucial. Also, agility and conditioning play a huge role in how the game goes down, so it's not like the guys were sitting around playing FIFA 13 on XBox.

That said, for as laudable as this move is, it's still paintball, which is to say it's still projectiles flying at your players at a ridiculous speed. So proper protection (up to and most certainly including a cup) is not optional.

Do you hear me, guys? NOT OPTIONAL. NOT—oh, jeez.

"

Team went paint-balling today. Zettel decided not to wear a shirt in the final entire offense vs defense round lockerz.com/s/234365303

— Matt Zanellato (@mzanellato) August 14, 2012"

That...that looks painful. And that also looks like something you don't want your starting defensive end putting himself through, no matter how superficial his wounds are.

Having said that, it looks like the opponents were aiming at his tattoo, and that we have very little problem with. If it doesn't look good on The Rock (and his ink doesn't), it won't look good on you either.

Shirtless antics aside, this is cool, and it'd be cool to see more college football teams break up the monotony of camp with something like this.