The crowd is cheering. Sweat is pouring from your temples. Your body aches from tackle after tackle. The ball is snapped. The play is coming to you. You don’t know if you have the energy to pursue, but you know you must. You look deep within. There it is. A reserve of energy you did not even realize you had. You make the tackle. You win the game. Only the strong survive, especially in the Southeastern Conference.
Similar scenes have no doubt paraded through the minds of many Mississippi State Bulldogs this summer and fall. The off-season conditioning program head football coach Sylvester Croom and head strength coach Jim Nowell have instituted for the Bulldog players is nothing short of brutal, yet nothing short of necessary.
Nowell, a Mississippi native, came to the Bulldogs by way of West Virginia University, where he helped condition his players to an 8-4 record in 2003.
Nowell knows the value of off-season conditioning as well as anyone, but admits that off-field training does not correlate completely with on-field success.
“Being in good shape just gives you the chance to be successful,” Nowell said. “Off-season conditioning can’t win any games, but it can lose games. If you’re not in shape and you’re not in condition, then you don’t even have the opportunity to compete.”
The opportunity to compete has been the goal of the coaching staff since they arrived on campus in 2004. Other schools in the SEC maintain constant weight-lifting programs, and without a comparable one Nowell and company would have little or no chance to make strides toward even mediocrity, much less greatness.
However, after three summers Nowell has finally reached a point where he feels confident in the progress his troops are making.
“It has gotten better every summer,” Nowell said. “Training is a progression like everything else. Our offense couldn’t run the same packages in year one that they can run now. We were able to do some things this summer that we haven’t been able to do before.”
The purpose of the conditioning is two fold. The skill drills help the athletes prepare for battle on the field and build endurance to keep them fresher longer. At the same time, the conditioning drills build muscle mass to a point where sustaining devastating injuries are less likely.
Most of the players have reacted well to the difficult work load, and while none particularly enjoy the physically draining sessions, most understand their intrinsic value.
“We’ve done a lot of 116’s, 110’s, and we have gasers, and when we mess up in practice, we do extra conditioning,” senior linebacker Quentin Culberson said. “But I think overall, our defense will be good this year (because of it).”