UTC Mocs coach Russ Huesman talks with players during a practice at Scrappy Moore Field.
UTC running back Marquis Green, center, breaks up the middle around defensive back Lucas Webb, right, and defensive lineman Josh Freeman (95) during a Mocs’ spring football scrimmage at Finley Stadium in Chattanooga.Three years worth of two-a-day workouts in his hip pocket, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga redshirt junior defensive tackle Josh Freeman had some wise words Tuesday for true freshman running back Richardre Bagley.
“Go to bed early,” Freeman said with a smile. “Rest up.”
If the Masters begins on Sunday’s back nine at Augusta National, preseason college football practice begins in earnest with two-a-days, those twice-daily exercises in blood, sweat and tears that start anew this morning for the Mocs atop warm and muggy Scrappy Moore Field.
Not that coach Russ Huesman necessarily sees these modern-day diabolical doubles in such savage terms. A survivor of former UTC coach Joe Morrison’s twice-daily torture chambers at the dawn of the 1980s, Huesman can make it sound as if the walk to Scrappy back in his day was five miles instead of five minutes and the only way to get water was to fetch it from the Tennessee River.
“The approach to two-a-days was a lot different back then,” he said. “There were no practice-time limitations. No practice-day limitations. You showed up, were fitted for pads, and good luck to you. We tell these kids all the old stories and they don’t believe half of it. But I guarantee you if any of them had to go through one day of ‘Packer Practice’ with [then-assistant coach] Joe Lee Dunn, they’d all quit football for good.”