the bulls are weak

[Guest S.  Bien]

the kid wore a boot on his ankle until the seventh game, then wasn't close to being in playing shape.  One can only hope that next year we finally get to see him go.

[smazza]

sbien- i willeave to you to stand next to the players

i can watch them get man handled by uconn from my bed

we need all lineman,TEs, fb, and linebackers  to achieve the goals

usc cronies? not a bad program to use as a model

when we lose the  battle of line of scrimmage and our ol and dl is  clearly tired and getting pushed around crunch time,I say we need better weight training

i go by what i see.

obviously, sbien i will leave it to you to describe what they look like big boy

me and my usc cronies are always concerned about performance not looks

results matter not size

second half of rutgers game,i thought our team was going to die they were sucking so much wind

you are a bit testy

did i hit nerve.did leavitt ask you to defend his weight training program?

leAVITT CAN PROVE ME WRONG BY PUTTING A TEAM on the field that can dominate weak sisters of big east.

it will never happen with leavitt.

his teams will be dominated by uconn and pitt

keep spinning for your man, mr leavitt

[sdgukhsdgl]

brute strength is overrated in football... give me the quick, leverage using, technical line of the Broncos over the mammoth strong lines like the Cowboys

and you are really underestimating most of the team if you dont think they can hit the 3-4-5 numbers.  Hell, im only about 160 and I can almost do 2-3-4 not working out half as much as the team does

[Guest rueben_horowitz]

brute strength is overrated in football... give me the quick, leverage using, technical line of the Broncos over the mammoth strong lines like the Cowboys

I hope you're not comparing the Denver Bronco's late 1990's chop-block line to the early/mid-1990's Cowboys line. The Boy's O-line was the best of all time; it was like men against boys. And they dominated w/o breaking peoples ankles and were never accused of being cheap-shot artists.

[Guest S.  Bien]

smazza, you watched the Uconn game from your bed?  Yuck, that game was a mid-afternoon affair, especially out West.

If you care to know, and actually be objective about your reasoning, we were missing three OL, and all three TE's were injured and missed that game.   Jon Miller left early with an elbow injury, Thed Watson didn't play, and Frank Davis left with an injury.  We had a back-up center doubling as a TE, and we had Carothers sliding over to center.

Of course you won't take that information as useful instead you'll probably give some ridiculous jackass statement how the staff has to do better conditioning to keep those guys healthy- spin away.

Rueb, I think what Rocky Top was talking about is my discussion on S&C methods.  Power lifting is one way, other teams like more Olympic lifting for explosiveness, and quickness.  For example, someone might be able to bench 550lbs, but that doesn't do much for football.  It's a neat stat to talk about, but I'd like to talk about their clean and jerk numbers, and or power clean numbers, and not just the weight but rep numbers.  This tells me who's explosive and not just a big fat piece of meat intending to simply lean on an opponent.  

Our staff likes their OL in the low 300lbs because we do so much zone blocking and it requires quickness, good footwork, and sliding.  They want them big and heavy, but still slight enough to be mobile, and capable to pull, and zone block.

[The_Reaper]

Steve, I think those two post have to be your longest ever made! ;D  Good points, however!     Reaper

[USFPDiddy]

fbdo79- you  seem to know the nuances of the game

"Now Smazza may be on to something that I have been noticing alittle.  If you look at our roster numbers for height and weight, we are comparable to almost anybody in the country.  But when you see us in real life its a different ball game. "

 "But when you see us in real life its a different ball game.  For the most part, a lot of our guys look smaller muscularly than our opposition, again with exceptions"

I SEE MOST OF YOU DON'T HAVE A CLUE ABOUT THE POST AND THAT IS OK BUT I WOULD EXPECT OUR COACHES WOULD

we need real coaches NOT fake coaches like rod smith and our strength and conditioning coach

i venture to say we have few players that are 3-4-5 players and it shows on the field.

MAYBE IT TAKES A TRAINED EYE OF SOMEONE WATCHING THE GAME 40 YEARS TO SEE THE LACK OF TEAM STRENGTH

TB- i was talking with very knowledgeable people last night at laker game and this 3-4-5 came up.

it explains why our lineman get man handled at times and our linebackers,while very fast,can't seem to finish tackles

tnbull posts BTW, 300 lb power clean, 400 lb bench, and 500lb squat are not comparable at all.THE BETTER PLAYERS CAN DO THESE NUMBERS

You are 100% wrong.our guys can't do it but these are numbers that all top players in the categories i mentioned strive to achieve

leavitation posts-Exactly I could squat +600 by my soph year in high school. Although 300lb power clean isnt all that much either. I was doing about 240 my junior year (in competition). I would imagine our lineman could all accomplish these goals. The 400lb bench also should be a very attainable mark.  

i SUBMIT THAT MOST OF OUR PLAYERS CANNOT DO IT.YOU MUST HAVE BEEN A VERY STRONG FELLOW IN YOUR DAY

WE WOULD NEVER HAVE LOST TO UCONN OR PITT IF WE HAD SUCH TEAM STRENGTH.

ASTRO- I ASSURE YOU THOSE NUMBERS ARE HARD FOR TODAYS SLEEK AND ATHLETIC PLAYER TO ACHIEVE WITHOUT EXTREME HARD WORK IN THE WEIGHT ROOM

IF FRANK DAVIS CAN DO THIS  OK BUT MOST OF THE TEAM CANNOT

LEAVITATION- I AM NOT BLOWING SMOKE.WE ARE A WEAK TEAM.DIDN'T YOU WATCH ANY OF THE GAMES MAN.ONE MAY BELONG TO THIS CLUB BUT MOST DON'T.

While I do agree that SOME of our players haven't looked that big (especially danny verpaele as a freshman), we also have some that could easily hit 3-4-5.

Attaining and maintaining strength of that caliper requires just as much attention to nutrition as lifting, and thus its up to the coaches to recruit players that are willing to follow such regiments closely.

HOWEVER, the biggest reason for most of our losses that I saw were actually in ASSIGNMENTS, not strength.  WVU gashing us for 70 + yards from the QB running leads me to believe we either had an AWFUL defensive play call on for it (not likely), or that a player or two took himself out of the play (we do that a lot).

And as small as you might feel our D is, they were still a top 20 unit even with their mistakes.  Our offensive skill position execution and decision making is our top concern, followed DISTANTLY by the D giving up inopportune big plays due to blown assignments.  A guy who squats 150 pounds less than another linebacker will still be a better player if he a) reads plays twice as fast and gets well into the play before he's ever touched.

I see our strength/conditioning as about avg, actually.  If the school is short money it is NOT as high a priority as the crappy execution we've seen.

[Apis Bull]

ifatigue set in several games

Strength and endurance are two completely different things.  I do think that we may not be as well conditioned at times.  The cramping drives me nuts.

[fbdo79]

One thing I can assure you of at USF is that our players are in shape.  We run and condition more than almost any other school.  For example, Miami used to have a conditioning test, that we did as a normal workout every monday during spring conditioning.  Our winter conditioning is 3-4 days per week and that is just running.  Over the summer we typically run 4 days per week starting June 1st.  Our conditioning test is the hardest thing you could possibly do to yourself, and by the time the first game roles around 90% of the team has passed the conditioning test, with the exception of the freshman lineman.  We run 2 to three days a week during the entire season.  We are in shape and we pride ourselves on that.  The cramping issue is more of a personal basis, we had one guy that cramped everyday despite medical therapy and some old wives tales for helping.  Cramping just happens with extreme exertion.

[Guest S.  Bien]

fb,

We've tried to explain the cramping situation to people on this board before.  However, to many have personal hang-ups and refuse to listen to reason.  I've always understood us to be one of the better condition programs in all 1-A.  In fact, that's what's kept us so competitive through the years in 1-A despite the fact at times we had inferior talent to our opponents.

The misnomer is that cramping is due to a lack of conditioning.  In extreme cases it is, but for top flight athletes cramping comes from muscle fatigue.   Often, no matter how fast you hydrate an athlete they will still cramp because they always push the envelop on exertion.