Swasey built this team in Golden's image. Remember, Golden was always harping on putting weight on players. He wasn't too concerned with speed. However, on the flip side, I'd take Moffitt back from LSU in a heart beat over Swasey. Players would come back to Miamito work out in the weight room regardless of who the S&C coach is.
I remember talking to the father of one of the OL's on one of Johnson's teams, I think it was. I remember the player, Mike Pigza, who was a tall thin OL who suffered a bad internal injury. I think I brought up the issue of steroids, and he said the coaches never pressed steroid usage, but pressured the players to "get bigger, get bigger." Maybe back then we had OLs who were too light. That was probably true since we rarely had good running teams, we did it on the passing of Kosar, Testaverde and Walsh. Still, the impression I received was, that there was a lot of pressure to get bigger. Big now, is a lot bigger, than big then. We have guys way over 300. Big then was around 270-280.
I'm not sure if these injuries are related to a poor conditioning and weight program. I'm not seeing the same team a lot of you are. I watched the replay stream late last night--for some reason ESPN3 lost a good part of what I guess was a VA drive in the early 4th-- but I did see a lot of good, swift defensive play by UM. Commentators were talking about how it looked like UM of old, with swarms of tacklers. I saw guys coming up very fast to close on ball carriers. Sure, they gave us some trouble on the edge, but that might have been scheme, not the players. I think they might have fixed that late. It is true, we're playing some DEs at OLB, because we're thin. All of our LBs should be Grace-type swift, like they used to be, but that can be fixed with new recruits.
I never like seeing multiple guys down at the end of a play. Makes me wonder too if we're soft, or if it's something else. Despite the old adage that the guy who plays hard doesn't get hurt that the coaches used to preach to us back in the day, sometimes I think the players who sell out end up with more injuries, especially those that you come back from. That seemed to be the case with a lot of our injuries. They guys eventually got up and walked off.
But I guess I know a lot less than all the football gurus on this board who received letters from some HS team down there for their junior and senior years, and even went on to play bigtime at southern NW Eastern Georgia State Tech Louisiana div 3 program.
A guy I used to know, a UM alum in Pittsburgh, officiated a lot of HS football and scrimmages at Pitt. He would see a lot of rough play in the scrimmages, and intra-squad fights. like between the offense and defense. He attributed this to a coaching philosophy adopted by Jackie Sherrill or Johnny Majors, I can't remember who the HC was at the time, and his AHC, Jimmy Johnson. They used to let the fights go on, the rough and dirty play in the scrimmages. He thought that was why there were so many injuries in UM practices during Jimmy's era. He contrasted the Sherrill-Majors-Johnson style to Paterno, where he also officiated practices. Paterno woul come down off the tower if there was a fight to lecture them. The other style let the guys beat up on each other for a while.
Maybe opposing teams are better at playing dirty against us, maybe they are just rougher, have rougher scrimmages. Contrast the '88 LSU game with that embarrassment some years later in the Peach Bowl. We were pussies, yet still wanted to act tough after the game and tried to follow them into their locker room and fight.
I don't think it's S&C, I think it's something else.
