Some fans get upset with their team’ bowl destination, but players can’t wait to get another game.
But players definitely get more excited when the bowl game is more prestigious. (I’m not going to lie: the better the bowl, the better the gifts!)
I can assure you that as players, football is football and anytime we got a chance to play an extra game, it was always better than sitting at home. Getting a chance to travel to a different city and play against a different team is always a fun time and an awesome experience.
Teams will start traveling to their bowl sites soon. Every team has its own preference on practice facilities and logistics, but for the most part every team is looking for the same things.
I do know that when teams come to Tampa for the Outback Bowl, USF doesn’t allow them to use their facilities. I guess I understand why, but I think that’s kind of ridiculous. Since the visiting teams sometimes aren’t allowed to use collegiate-level facilities, some use practice fields at local high schools.
People always ask what practices were like when we traveled for bowl games. They’re basically the exact same.
Obviously, high school fields and facilities are not even close to the level of major college football, but we still got a hell of a lot of work in.
The one clear disadvantage is the showering after practice. Most high school fieldhouses have five or shower heads, maybe. You can imagine the stench on the bus from practice back to the hotel. Hopefully they’ve figured out that situation now.
Another disadvantage was that we didn’t have the same film capacity. We didn’t have the high towers that we could get a good solid view of the entire practice field, so that’s also a pretty big difference.
We would typically eat a team breakfast in the hotel at about 9 a.m. After breakfast, we held a quick team meeting at about 10 a.m to go over the itinerary, and then we’d break up into offensive and defensive meetings. We met for roughly one hour to go over the game plan, watch the opposing team’s tape, and maybe a little bit of the practice from the day before.
After those meetings we got our things ready and boarded the bus to the practice site. We’d practice from about noon to 2:30 p.m. and then headed on back to the hotel. We’d have a good solid lunch and would then get together as an offensive unit to watch the practice tape. After that, we had the rest of the day off.
That schedule is pretty generic and it isn’t exact because the schedule would change daily due to different functions and things the bowl had planned for us.
The Man. The Myth. The Legend.
