Come August, you can bet we will be hearing, in excruciating detail, all about Coach Wannstedt’s, uh, interesting conditioning/team spirit building off-season workouts.
The first change Wannstedt made was instituting accountability wherein if an individual fails to live up to his responsibility, the whole team pays. If a player misses a meeting with a tutor, is late for a study hall, is late for a meeting with an academic advisor or a workout or physical therapy, then every member of the team has to do more running.
“I have moles all over campus,” Wannstedt said, with a laugh. “Actually, the refreshing thing is this — I haven’t had to check up on every little thing because the players are doing it themselves. We have guys calling other guys in the morning to wake them up and make sure they get to class. We have guys calling around to make sure other guys have a ride to the South Side for training. We’ve had amazing results.
“Our leaders have really attacked this, and the other guys have indeed followed. We have a team that is much closer right now because they all have more ownership in it. They all know they need to rely on each other to come through — and that’s really what we’re after, team unity.”
Okay, nothing that out of the ordinary there. Fairly common tactic.
The other initiative has been a tough training program informally known as “Fridays with the coach.”
The players have their usual weightlifting and conditioning program all week, but Friday is special. They show up at the South Side facility at a designated time then board buses and head to an undisclosed location to train in the streets — Rocky Balboa style.
One Friday, they ran up the hill from Second Avenue across the Swinburne Bridge into Oakland. Another time, they ran the steps inside the Cathedral of Learning — all 36 floors — twice. One time, they showed up at 5:30 a.m., only to be told to run down the walking path next to the Monongahela River, even though it was dark and cold. Their instructions were to keep running until they ran into the other coaches — who were a few miles down the path.
Um, is it really a good idea to have them running and stumbling down darkened paths? I know that trail, and while there is no risk of falling in the river or traffic, running effectively blind doesn’t seem like the smartest idea.
Of course you get team leaders saying that it is building the camaraderie and esprit de corps and such.
Wannstedt said he has been impressed that the players have rallied around each other. The results of the conditioning program are obvious. Last week marked the seventh Friday, and every player — including the linemen — made all 10 trips up and down the steps with little problem.
“The first Friday, it was ugly,” Wannstedt said. “Guys were puking, they were falling out. It was freezing cold, and we had guys who had tears frozen on their faces. Now, it is almost not any fun anymore because they are all in such good shape. But that was the goal.
“And next week, we’re going to reward them with some fun. I’ll have an obstacle course or something set up, and we’ll have a little competition. They’ve worked hard, they deserve to enjoy themselves a little.”
Has he been watching “Knight School” on ESPN or something?
Why do coaches get so happy when they make their players throw-up? “Yay, we’ve made them sick!” I’m not singling out Wannstedt here. This is a common thing. I recall Urban Meyer and his “circle of pain” or something that resulted in positive team vomiting. Like this is a good thing to push the kids to the point where their bodies want to expel all things from the system.
I await the point where some coach proudly points out that he worked some kid so hard that he collapsed and crapped himself. (My money’s on Ole Miss Coach Ed Orgeron.)
And just out of idle curiosity, since these things were taking place on public streets and paths, who cleaned this stuff up?
Like I said, we’ll read all about this again come the end of the summer as the myriad of preseason stories start being told. This will get near the top of the list. And then we can expect to hear it being told as “color” during the first couple of games. And if Pitt does very well, this will become an oft-repeated tale of team building and bonding and stuff.
This isn’t to totally rip on Coach Wannstedt, but if this was taking place in Columbus, State College, Lubbock or anywhere else we’d totally be mocking it. Might as well get out in front of it.
