Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/349223
LONG GAME James Franklin's o walking. That was rule No. 1 during James Franklin's practice sessions this past spring, his 4rst as Penn State's head football coach. As soon as one drill was over, it was on to the next one… and the next one… and the next one. And if players thought that the brief interludes between those drills were a good opportunity to catch their breath, well, they thought wrong. "One thing that Franklin stresses is that when a drill is over, you run to wherever you have to go," junior cornerback Jordan Lucas said. "If you get caught walking, I don't know what would happen. Nobody was brave enough to test that." Franklin's demands may be new, but players' thoughts concerning their o5-season workload – they've said, essentially, that more is being asked of them than ever before – are as familiar as the white helmets and black shoes they'll be sporting come Aug. 30. Players always say they're pumping more iron, running more sprints, studying more 4lm. This is the 128th season of Penn State football, which means it's the 127th season in which the Nittany Lions have worked harder in the o5-season than they did the year before. It's easy to get caught up in the swirl of excitement and possibility that al- ways accompanies the start of college football season and come away convinced that everything is going to be OK – maybe a lot better than OK – simply because players logged all that time in the weight room and on the practice fields. But their predecessors did all that, too. Sometimes it worked out. Sometimes it didn't. What's more, most of the teams on their schedule have been logging just as much time as the Lions have. You think Ohio State is slack- ing this summer? That Michigan is just chillin'? Those programs have as much histo- ry to uphold as Penn State, and they've got something the Lions don't (at least not at present): a chance to vie for Big Ten and national championships in 2014. Franklin, to his credit, has refrained from spouting the usual work-ethic cliches, not- ing that when it comes to o5-season preparation, there is a big di5erence between quan- tity and quality. N Better days are coming for PSU, but challenges loom this fall >>