FAYETTEVILLE — Once upon a time, Arkansas native and then-Texas A&M head coach Paul “Bear” Bryant used to put his Aggies players - known as the Junction Boys - through off-campus practices that lasted from dawn to dusk in sweltering temperatures.
There were no NCAA regulations preventing it, so there was no thought of heatstroke or concussions – only getting your team as mentally and physically prepared as it could be for the season.
It’s quite different these days as player safety concerns resulted in the NCAA banning two-a-day practices on the field back before 2017 preseason camps began.
Now, you can only have one full practice and a walk through or meetings for any second get-together.
“It seems right,” Arkansas assistant coach and former Razorback quarterback Barry Lunney, Jr. said. “I tell people all the time that it is just different now. The year-round training, keeping them through summer school - both sessions - and then three or four years ago they started allowing you to work with your guys, to have interaction through the summer.
“It used to be five years ago where that was completely off-limits. So now you take a kid that trains year round, doesn’t go home, stays here both sessions and your position coach interacts with you. To me, it almost eliminates to the need to go out there and have two-a-days.”
Lunney has a theory on the birth of two-a-days.
“There is a reason that you used to do two-a-days and it was because you didn’t see your team until August,” Lunney said. “The coach thinks I have only got three weeks to get these guys in shape so they say, ‘Hey, let’s practice tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock. Hey, these guys stink, they are terrible, we only have three weeks, so let’s practice again this afternoon,’ and you have some moron who said, ‘Yes, coach, that sounds good, let’s do that and practice again at 7 tonight.’
“And so two-a-days were born.”
Arkansas practiced Friday night and Saturday morning – something Razorbacks head coach Chad Morris dubbed two “first” practices.
“Our guys are in shape and I have been very impressed in day one the second time here, seeing guys in shape and moving around,” Morris said. “They look better, they are all moving much better than they have done in the past and that is a credit to coach (Trumain) Carroll and his strength staff and the time and effort they put in this summer and then their retention level.”
Morris said Saturday’s workout was a tracking practice, one of three types of practices he uses.
“We did what we call a tracking time where you obviously can’t tackle,” Morris said. “You want to focus on finishing and you hold the whistle so a play can get on the edge or across the middle and I don’t blow the whistle yet, so I can see guys tracking the ball, see if they are taking great angles, see if our running backs are finishing, if our wide receivers are catching with a burst – those are things that we look for in a tracking time.
“One of the things we always talk about is learning how to practice. Know the tempo of the day. There is a tracking, there is a thud and there is a live. If we can all learn how to practice, that is when you you really see your team grow and develop when you can keep guys healthy as you practice the right way.”
The Razorbacks will be back on the field today and Tuesday in shoulder pads for “thud work," go live Wednesday and Thursday, take a step back Friday then scrimmage on Saturday in either Razorback Stadium or the practice fields outside Walker Pavilion.
Arkansas will use each of the 29 total practices the NCAA allows programs before their first game.
“We still have guidelines, but it just seems right to me that we go one practice a day,” Lunney said.