Dawgs By Nature
Training camp.
Why is it called training camp? The reason is to get players back in shape: to “train” their bodies. So, they lived a full life away from the game and ate what they wanted. Back in the day, players and coaches had offseason jobs. When Vince Lombardi was the offensive coordinator with the New York Football Giants, he worked as an executive in a New York bank. He almost remained there.
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QB Y.A.Tittle had an insurance business. Even though he is no longer with us, his agency is still going strong. Another quarterback, Frank Ryan of the Cleveland Browns, worked as an assistant professor teaching advanced math at Case Western Reserve University. Roger Staubach sold real estate. Cleveland’s own Jim Brown became a marketing representative for Pepsi-Cola and was an actor in movies. Lou “the Toe” Groza sold insurance.
The reason they had desirable jobs was the fact that pro football paid better than most occupations during the season, but did not carry an athlete for all 12 months. Both the Green Bay Packers and Decatur Staleys (later renamed the Chicago Bears) began as company teams. The allure to play for one of these two clubs was that guys could play football and get paid, and after the season was over were hired to work in the plant.
Today, player contracts contain workout bonuses. Mostly, athletes will work out during the offseason, and so when they show up for training camp, they are already in shape. Not all, of course, but the percentages are pretty high.
If a player spent his offseason working for his father’s tire store, most likely he showed up in shape and was already used to the humidity and heat. If he was a substitute school teacher, chances are he needed to be pushed, and that is what training camp did.
The Browns are set to open training camp at the Browns Training Facility in Berea, Ohio on July 22 for rookies and July 28 for the veterans. If you haven’t seen this magnificent complex, it is quite a gem for the players and coaches.
Having such a nice place for training camp wasn’t always the case. In fact, players were isolated from the rest of the universe, including their families. In the past, camp was held at a college campus that did not have any students yet, being the summer months. Friends, wives, relatives, church members, and neighbors were only able to come out on certain days and watch practices or able to visit with their player or coach.
The remainder of the days of the training camp calendar were reserved for the Browns coaching staff. The remoteness allowed the players to do two things: concentrate on football, and make the final roster.
For the longest time, every NFL club found a college campus for training camp. And it was usually the small to medium colleges. Each school had a football team, so there were several practice...
