Few players look forward to time at pro training camp

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/05/2017 (3041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the Navy Seals came up with the mantra, “If it doesn’t suck, we don’t do it,” it’s quite possible one of them had, at one time, experienced the banality of a professional football training camp.

Training camp, which kicks off Wednesday for Winnipeg Blue Bombers rookies and Sunday for veterans, is a lot like how you might picture your first visit to a correctional institute: if you’re new, nobody seems to really like you. You are to be seen but never heard from. New fish is just one of several different terms for a rookie, or newbie. You are tested, mocked and lightly hazed and any credentials you thought you might have had prior to that first walk to your prison cell — I mean dormitory — are quickly dismissed.

Your guards, or coaches, will yell at you for pretty much anything: a bad play, a good play, a missed play, an effort play, it doesn’t really matter. Some will do it because they are power tripping, some yell to make a statement or show you who how hyper-aggressive they can be and others scream at you as a form of correction or endorsement. At the start of camp, the first time one of the coaches has a meltdown and a tantrum, it is abrupt and startling. By the end of camp, the novelty fades into the background as common and regular as white noise.

From morning to night, the prison of training camp is scheduled for you and is completely inflexible. Wake-up time is scheduled, breakfast is scheduled, taping is scheduled, practice is scheduled, film is scheduled, treatment is scheduled. Rinse and repeat. Heck, shower time with your fellow inmates is scheduled. If they can film you doing something and watch it and correct it, they will do it. Once you think you’ve seen enough of a single play in practice rewound six times in a row, it will be rewound a seventh and then an eighth.

While training camp food will never be compared to prison food, you still line up for it, jostle with each other around it and complain about it. You have a tray and you have a buffet line three times a day. It is always served by someone else — someone responsible for portion control — and you are at the mercy of their menu selection. Lunch rooms, like jail, can be pretty cliquey. Players tend to seat themselves by position group, seniority, alma matter or for their own amusement.

On Day 1 of your correctional football experience, everything looks and smells new. By Day 17, everything smells like a strange concoction of sweat, tape, rancid shaving cream and Tiger Balm. Everything hurts in training camp, and every day takes twice as long to end. Monotony is your enemy all pre-season long. Any change to your daily routine, such as an ice cream surprise or an evening off, is met with uproarious applause, simply because it is different. Simple amusements, such as playing a game of “trashket-ball” — throwing a soccer ball into a garbage pail — can become the highlight of your day.

For first-year players, the stress and pressure of it all can cripple and overwhelm them. One bad play or one bad day and it can be over as quickly as it began. Their first film session, where the positional coach slows the tape down and goes frame by frame over their biggest mistake in front of their peers, will seem as though it lasts forever.

If you get injured, you will most likely be cut. If you don’t improve, you will be cut. If you can’t pick up the material fast enough and apply it on the field, you will be cut. If you just go out and try your best, you will be cut, because it’s not good enough. If you don’t take direction well, or don’t meld cohesively into your position grouping, you are out of there.

A lot of former players mention a lot of different things they miss once a football career comes to an end. Training camp has never been — and never will be — one of them.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears weekly in the Free Press.

Twitter: @DougBrown97