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Thursday - August 12, 2010
11:40am CT
Remember back in early January when Jimbo brought in his hand picked staff he also brought in a new strength and conditioning coach named Vic Viloria. Vic had been at SMU and Jimbo has
been a fan of his ever since they coached together at LSU with Nick Saban. The prior strength staff consisted of 3 coaches, now there are over 8 I believe and every station where players
are working out they have a coach….much, much different than what we had in the past. Jimbo also brought in a nutritionist – every players meals are monitored and players eat together
for every meal (also a major change from the past). Some players have been put on diets to drop weight (i.e., running back Debrale Smiley who has dropped weight but is still a bulldozer
at over 240 pounds) while most have been training to put on ‘good weight’ which is muscle mass. Last year we had one offensive player over 300 pounds now we have 5 – both of our starting
tackles weigh over 300 so Trickett is getting the results he wants. In fact in an interview on fan day he blatantly said he is finally getting the type of workout regimen/attention that
he has wanted for his OL since he got there 2+ years ago. On the DL we now have 3 DT’s over 300. Jimbo has said that the days of seeing FSU players dominated at the line of scrimmage
are going away. Oh, I will finish this by saying it is believed that our two starting safeties will give FSU the biggest starting lineup at that position in college football – one is at
222 and the other 230. (Oh, and we also now employ a sports psychologist for the players).
The team is now out of shells and in full gear as of Tuesday (two-a-days have officially started now). The first scrimmage is scheduled for tomorrow. One thing to note is that Chris
Thompson is still the #1 running back – coaches are saying he is by far the most consistent back we have but Jermaine Thomas is fighting hard to get his starting job back. According to
Fisher no one other than Ponder and Hudson (all American guard) have a guaranteed starting position. Competition is tight and players appear to be working extremely hard. Gone are the
days when tenure assured you a starting role. The best players will play…period (per Fisher).
One final nugget is that the indoor practice facility design has been completed and a location selected. Jimbo is working really hard with the boosters to get the funding to build it
since Tally is the lightning capital and when practice is interrupted/cancelled due to weather they have absolutely no where to go to practice full speed. Apparently we are getting close
but we are still quite a few million short of getting this done any time soon. The players dorm, however, has been approved and construction will begin shortly. To comply with NCAA
rules 51% of the occupants will be students who will pay rent (hence this facility becomes self-funding) while the remaining 49% will be the entire football team who will be segregated
from the rent paying students. It is all part of Jimbo’s belief that the team is a family and they need to eat together and sleep together – a lot of this unity is already apparent and
Christian Ponder is a big leader in this arena in holding each other accountable. In fact there is a unity counsel that sets penalties for players breaking team rules (i.e., not going to
class, etc.). Of note, however, not only does the player who broke the rules have to run gassers but the entire team has to do them because of that players poor decision.
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