Colorado University Athletics
Buffs Could Open Fall Camp In Late July; Two-A-Days May Become Thing Of Past
March 13, 2017 | Football, Neill Woelk
BOULDER — Thanks to some new recommendations from the NCAA concerning concussion prevention, Colorado could open fall camp in July for just the third time in program history — and two-a-day sessions could become a thing of the past.
The NCAA Sports Science Institute recently recommended that college football programs eliminate two-a-day practice sessions, a popular strategy of coaches across America. The recommendations also include reducing contact at all practices and reducing the days featuring full contact in practice to just one day per week during the season.
In order to give programs a chance to make up for the lost practices, the schools will be allowed to start their preseason camps one week earlier. In Colorado's case, it means the Buffs are considering July 28 as their opening day of fall camp.
Colorado has opened fall practices in July only twice previously in its history. The first came in 1990, when the Buffs played Tennessee in the Pigskin Classic in late August. The second came in 2001, when Colorado played Fresno State in late August.
Now, although the Buffs don't open the season until Friday, Sept. 1, against Colorado State, they will likely open practice in July in order to get all the allowed practices in before the season begins.
Along with the primary goal of reducing concussions, the early start could also have a peripheral benefit for the Buffs. It means players who are coming back from injury — such as linebacker Derek McCartney and wide receiver Juwann Winfree, both of whom suffered ACL tears — could get more practices in.
Normally, players coming back from such serious injury don't participate in two practices a day. Now, they won't have to skip the practices that would have been the second of two-a-day sessions.
"Hopefully that will help them have four or five more practices under their belt they wouldn't have had with the two-a-day situation," head coach Mike MacIntyre said.
MacIntyre said both players are progressing on schedule.
"Everything I've been told, they're doing really really well," MacIntyre said. "There hasn't been a day they've missed or had a setback. It looks like they're right on track to be back just like they should be, being able to do stuff this summer and have a good two, two-and-a-half months to be really full go before we hit."
Teams will still be allowed to have evening "walk-throughs" after a morning practice, but those sessions can't be conducted with a football.
WEEKEND VISIT: MacIntyre and a number of coaches around the nation spent the weekend in Tennessee, visiting former Carson-Newman coach Ken Sparks.
Sparks, battling cancer, is in hospice care, but a number of coaches who participated in his annual camps over the year held a reunion of sorts and visited him over the weekend. He is the fifth-winningest coach in NCAA history and coached at Carson-Newman for 36 years, retiring after last season.
"It was tough," MacIntyre said. "The great thing about it is he brought everybody together. He's been doing that clinic for over 30 years. It's a husband-wife clinic to strengthen marriages and administer to coaches and wives. We had a lot of great coaches there, a lot of neat people."
MacIntyre said the coaches there over the weekend included Clyde Christensen ()offensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins), Chan Gailey and Fisher DeBerry.
"It was uplifting, a celebration of his life and good seeing friends, but it was also a tough situation," MacIntyre said.
PRACTICE REPORT: The Buffs put in some "surprise" contact work Monday morning, working specifically on some two-minute drills, goal-line drills and "last play" drills.
"It was a 50-50 day (a practice when Buffs could tackle 50 percent of the time), so we did a little bit of tackling today," MacIntyre said. "We wanted to see how they handled it. Didn't tell anybody and here we went. Got some good enthusiasm. Thought we had a good day in that aspect of it."
The situation allowed the offense to put quarterbacks under pressure and see how they would react in two-minute drills, in particular working on avoiding sacks and throwing the ball away to stop the clock.
Such situations also allow the Buffs to put younger players in "pressure" situations to see how they will react.
"We keep looking at guys, trying to get then in harder and harder positions," MacIntyre said. "Say you're playing linebacker, trying to find ways to put more stress on him in certain situations in practice that they haven't seen before, trying to make it more and more game-like.
MacIntyre also said the Buffs' kickers are "kicking a lot better. The last three times we've put then in live situations, they've kicked really really well, so that's encouraging to see from our field goal kickers."
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu
