Blue White Illustrated

ers]," he said. "There's always a happy medium, and in the NFL they don't tackle every day. This is a physical, hard-nosed, collision sport, and you can't bang these guys together for 20 practices." Instead of tackling, the Gamecocks scrimmaged using so-called thud drills. In a thud drill, the defender stops at the point of contact – the thud point – instead of tackling the ball carrier and driving him to the ground. It's an approach that NFL teams have been using for more than a decade, and it was in use at South Carolina in 2011 when Butler was the team's linebackers coach. That year, the Gamecocks finished in the top 10 for the first time in school history and won a programbest 11 games. "We practiced as hard as you can," | Several times this past spring, reporters were invited to Holuba Hall to check out spring practice. What was on view – stretches, special teams work, individual drills – didn't differ much from last season. What was heard, however, varied wildly. From the sounds of AC/DC and rap mogul Rick Ross to indiscernible country tunes and even an operatic rendition of "God Bless America," the team's loudspeakers blared music from the sidelines directly onto the playing fields. A sick and twisted plot to irritate head coach Bill O'Brien? Hardly. Since the arrival of the new coaching staff in 2012, music has become a big part of Penn State's practice regimen. "Football now, more than in the past, is about communication," O'Brien said. "It's about players talking to each other on the field, and [the music] forced them to use hand signals and read each others' lips. It's really something that I thought was pretty interesting, and so when I came to Penn State, I feel that one of the things that we have to do is play fast. And so, in order to play fast, we have to use code words and signals and just do that to a guy, and he knows what that means. When the music is blaring, it forces them to communicate." O'Brien said he's refined his use of music, building on what he learned as an assistant under George O'Leary at Georgia Tech and Ralph Friedgen at Maryland. O'Leary and Friedgen would use white noise – UHF static – to force players to communicate wordlessly. But that approach had its drawbacks. "It was just the worst headache by the end of practice," O'Brien said. O'Brien eventually left the college game for the NFL. At New England, the coaching staff didn't use white noise, preferring CDs of music compiled by coaches or players. When he took over at Penn State last season, O'Brien quickly came to realize that he would need to develop an effective way of dealing with noise – even at home. "I couldn't believe how loud it was in Beaver Stadium when we were on offense," he said. "In pro football, when you're on offense at home, it's like a library. So we played the music more last year, and I think it really helped our team. It's not just to have fun. But the young players, they love the music. They get into it. It's pretty neat." Hip-hop is a big favorite of the Nittany Lions, but an effort is made to diversify the playlist, given that the team is comprised of more than 100 players with wide-ranging musical tastes. "[The players] kind of choose the music," O'Brien said. "I know last year, Stephon Morris would choose the music sometimes and some of our younger coaches choose the music. I know Larry Johnson has a disc that he plays every once in a while. So we switch it up. "Some guys would play country sometimes, sometimes we'd play rap, sometimes there's gospel music when it's Larry's disc. It's pretty interesting to see, but the kids really enjoy it." O'Brien said he prefers the Lions' musical approach to some of the techniques teams used during his previous coaching stops. He cited O'Leary's penchant for playing the opposing team's fight song while at Georgia Tech. "We'd be getting ready to play Georgia, and he would play the Georgia fight song over and over and over again," O'Brien said. "We would all say we hoped we didn't hear it that many times on Saturday. So ever since I've been in Division I coaching, that's something that the coach has done."

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