Chip Scoggins: These aren't your father's football practices — and that's good

per Chip:

Bryce Paup visited an NFL training camp one day last summer. A veteran of 11 training camps as a player, Paup probably felt a tinge of envy by what he saw.

“It was like, wow, that’s pretty nice. They don’t even hardly hit,” he said.

Men of a certain age still cringe when remembering the brutality of football training camp of yesteryear. Two-a-day practices in full pads with endless hitting. Day after day after day.

Tales of machismo revealed in long, grueling practices are romanticized, even immortalized in the case of Bear Bryant’s famous Junction Boys.

Paup, about to begin his first season as Gophers defensive line coach, went through his first NFL training camp in 1990 as a rookie with the Green Bay Packers. He told close friends that he hoped to last long enough to buy a house, two cars and then “I’m out of here.”

“It was that brutal,” he said.

http://www.startribune.com/these-aren-t-your-father-s-football-practices-thankfully/441315793/

Go Gophers!!