Sorry I'm so late getting back with you, worked at my hobby job at DCH this afternoon and then went to a REC meeting.
That is a funny video but it's funny because John and the others survived the rigors of playing for Bear and look back at it in a realistic but funny way. What they are saying happened.
The difference between the way John practiced and the way CNS and his team practice is like comparing daylight and dark. When Bear coached, there was no breaks during practice, you were pushed to the limit everyday except the day before the game. Many players played both ways and to do that your conditioning had to be at a very high level. I can remember one practice where the offensive and defensive ends got into a fight on the first play of scrimmage. Bear let out a yell and down the tower he came. He went and grabbed each of them by the jersey and yelled at them that if they had that much energy then let's fight, circle up everybody. Those two fought until both were on their knees and could swing their arms no more. Bear then asked them had they rather play football or fight and both said play football. Bear said good, go over there with that coach and he'll tell you what to do, they ran wind sprints for 30 minutes and were brought back over to the group. Nothing else was said and each was put back at their position gasping for air and started running plays. End of the fight.
Practice at Bama today is so regimented. Everything they do has a time clock running and a horn sounds and they move on to the next part of practice. CNS is a fanatic about punctuality and each session starts at a certain time and ends at a certain time. Thay have trainers with liquids moving around to all of the players keeping them hydrated, back in John's day none of that happened. The team of today also has all types of machinery to help with the skills of their positions, none of this was available back when.
We are talking about two different eras and the reason for the differences is that technology has provided all of these new tools to better the players and I'm sure if Bear had access to all that is available today, he would have used it as well. Staying hydrated had never been heard of back when and you took some salt pills to keep from cramping and got water when practice was over.
It's a big difference between the two about how they did things but there's no difference in their results, both eras were National Champions.
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