I get cramps just thinking about it

CRAMPING MY STYLE

Where are the salt pills?

It's too hot to get out of the office or the house today. But across Tennessee there are thousands of football players practicing in heat indexes of more than 100 degrees.

When I was playing high school and college football in the late 1960s and early 1970s we didn't have Powerade or Gatorade.

But we had those hard yellow salt tablets that we would chase down with one slurp of water to prevent cramps.

I still believe the ulcers I have today are from the many salt pills I took. But it didn't make any difference, I still cramped.

The thoughts of preseason football practice bring back memories of awakening in the middle of the night screaming with cramps as big as golf balls in my legs.

We didn't have many water breaks back then. "High-quality H2O," as the Waterboy would say, was something you got if you did well in practice and something you didn't get if you were having a bad day.

But, I remember it being pretty hot out on the practice field for two-a-days.

The ground would be so hot that those old rubber-bottomed soccer shoes would burn the bottoms of your feet.

We did finally figure out that if we pulled the bottom of our thick cotton/rayon practice jerseys up and tied it with the string to our shoulder pads that our stomachs could get enough air to make us cooler.

Guys would store ice in their helmets during break in an effort to get a little more water. Others would soak their practice jerseys and suck the water from them.

All that couldn't have been healthy.

But we made it just fine.

I remember the first time that our coach bought this simplified weather station on a pole that he would use to determine whether it was too hot for us to practice.

I only remember one time that we had to wait a little later to practice. That contraption either didn't work right or coach didn't know how to read it.

If he had asked the team we would have told him it was too hot.

Looking back, I wouldn't trade those memories for anything. The scars are still there and I'm proud of each and every one of them.

My neck hurts daily and I'm sure it is because we were taught to tackle by putting our foreheads in the numbers.

The left knee is gone and one day will likely have to be replaced from a kickoff team injury suffered at Carson-Newman.

But, my memory is still there, I love to communicate and the fingers love to type.

That should give me a job in this business for a day or two.

TRAINING CAMP DISCIPLINE

Team rules are team rules. But for some reason the transition from fun summer behavior to disciplined football practice always has casualties.

Talking to teams across the state there are some players who are now serving sentences handed down from the head coach for breaking team rules.

Late for practice, not showing up at all, too much alcohol and the list goes on and on.

But what's new?

As long as there has been football there have been boys breaking training and getting in trouble. Not that is is accepted or endorsed, but it is a fact.

Rowdy football players often make for rowdy young men off the field.

Such was the case in high school when I attended a summer football camp at Carson-Newman and Coach Dal Shealy walked in with Coach Ron Case and found Morristown East quarterback Carter Davis, Rutledge quarterback Jerry Davis (cousins) and myself in a place outside of Jefferson City where we shouldn't have been.

There was a yard marker every five yards on the football practice field and it had to be longer than 100 yards. Ten suicides (or did they call it hunting Easter eggs?) meant start at the goaline and go touch the first five-yard marker and run back. The process continued until each five-yard stripe had been touched and you had raced back to the goaline. That equaled one suicide.

But the old red-clay hill that separated the practice fields was tougher. We sprinted from the bottom of the hill to the top over and over and slid back down to go again.

Then we did something where we would do a forward roll at each yard stripe.

Coaches always have a way to teach players lessons that they will never forget. I can truthfully say that coaches made me puke more than anything else in my life.

OK, enough of the trip back in history. But 40 years after my first preseason practice there are still memories that will likely never be forgotten.

So enjoy it guys.

Would I do it all over again?

Without a doubt.