Former college players remember Pat Murphy fondly.
This graf reminded me of a Vince Lombardi technique:
...Former Notre Dame outfielder Mike Rotkis recalled a 28-10 loss at Western Michigan in Murphy’s debut season. When the Irish returned to campus, Murphy had them do sprints.
“It was like the scene in ‘Miracle,’“ Rotkis said, referring to the Kurt Russell movie about the 1980 U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team. “I can’t go anymore, you’re trying to run as fast as you can and you’re barely walking, you can barely lift your leg. He’s like, ‘All right, that was an embarrassment. Don’t let it happen again,’ and walked out.”...
IIRC, with Lombardi it was "grass drills."
...One of the favorite things of Vince Lombardi, coach, general manager and spiritual leader of the world-champion Green Bay Packers, is the grass drill. He lets an assistant coach lead the bending and stretching exercises, the calisthenics, but he himself must run the part of the drill that turns grown behemoths into groveling, gasping, sweat-soaked, foamy-mouthed animals without breath enough left to complain. It is a simple drill best conducted in the summer sun at brain-frying temperatures because sane men will not do it. The crazy men run in place, double time, as hard as they can, while Vince Lombardi shouts at them in his irritating, nasal, steel-wool-rubbing-over-grate voice. “C’mon, lift those legs, lift ’em. Higher, higher.” Suddenly he yells, “Front!”, and the players, who averaged $41,000 each for fourteen football games last season (there also were two post-season games), many of them no longer boys, but men in their thirties with families to care for and paunches to battle, flop on their bellies and as soon as they do, even while they are falling, Lombardi shouts, “Up!”, and they must leap to their feet, running, running, faster, higher. “Front!”, and they are down. “Back!”, and they roll over on their backs. “Up!” Run. “Front!” Down. “Up!” Over and over, always that raucous voice, nagging, urging, demanding ever more from rebelling lungs and legs. “Move those damn legs. This is the worst-looking thing I ever saw. You’re supposed to be moving those legs. Front! Up! C’mon, Caffey, move your legs. Keep them moving. C’mon, Willie Davis, you told me you were in shape. Front! Up! C’mon, Crenshaw, get up. It takes you an hour to get up. Faster. Move those legs. Dammit, what the hell’s the matter with you guys? You got a lot of dog in you. You’re dogs, I tell you. A bunch of dogs. Let’s move. Front! Up! For the love of Pete, Crenshaw, you’re fat. Ten bucks a day for every pound you don’t lose. Crenshaw! It’s going to cost you ten bucks a day. Lift those legs!”
The sound of their panting—seventy men reduced to sodden football suits filled with quivering muscles—rises over them in a moist, squishy roar. As the drill goes on the noises they make breathing almost drown out the sound of Lombardi’s voice. The breathing becomes louder and somewhat wetter, until it sounds like the ocean when the last wave rolls up into the sucking sand. Finally, when they are beyond the point of humanity or sanity, Lombardi lets up. “All right,” he shouts. “Around the goalpost and back. Now run!”
“That’s when you hate him,” says Henry Jordan...
The players make more money these days. I wonder if MLF makes them do grass drills when they lose a game.
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