Urban Meyer famously said that hiring Mickey Mariotti as his head strength coach was his most important hire after taking the job at Ohio State because strength coaches spend so much more time with players due to NCAA restrictions on coaches during the summer.
One of the most important times in player development is over the summer, when players have a full off season of the weight room and spring ball under their belts and look to take that momentum into the summer. During that summer session of their time will be spent with the strength staff (or holding practices on their own accord ), while the coaches have to take a more "hands off" approach for a few months.
With just two spring practices left, Steve Sarkisian decided to get proactive and start to train his guys how to practice over the next few months without the coaches. With just 15 spring practices allowed by NCAA rules, using one or two of them of it to prepare your guys for the summer is an interesting strategy that actually makes a ton of sense.
After practice last night Sark explained their strategy.
"We really spent practice on trying to get our players prepared for summer when we, as coaches, don't get to be out here, and when our strength coaches don't get to be out here and these guys are out here working together in the summer preparing for fall camp. We want to make sure that they're doing things the right way."
"We want to be sure that they're warming up properly, that the leaders are stepping up, that there is organization, that they understand how to practice, because the big key is that we want to get better, but we also want to prevent injury."
"So that was the emphasis of today's practice, was really teaching these guys to coach one another through a summer practice because we're going to have about 16 of these through the summer, and it's imperative to our success that one, they get better and are working together well, but two, that we're also preventing injuries, which is key."
It's an interesting strategy that would be viewed differently from the FBS to the NAIA and Junior College levels, but it got me to thinking; With a set number of practices to get things accomplished with a new team (void of most, or all, of your incoming freshman class), how many coaches agree with Sark's strategy? Why or why?
Email or tweet your take to doug@footballscoop.com or @CoachSamz (or leave them in the comments below), and I'll update the article with the best opinions from around the country. Be sure to add what level you coach at for context.
UPDATE 1: A few coaches have reached out to us to tell us that North Texas has followed a similar plan. They held their spring game as part of practice #14 and then used practice #15 similarly to how Sark ran practice last night.