This is an unlocked article from the Wall Street Journal. They make it look like you have to sign up but you do not.

This approach sounds revolutionary to me.

https://www.wsj.com/sports/football/indiana-curt-cignetti-fernando-mendoza-510bc45a?st=mWeLJR&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

While I've always been doubtful about the Navy Seal, or no-water-when-it's-hot type of practices, this barely-practice approach a surprise to me. It's certainly worked for Indiana so far this year, though.

LOL. Sounds a whole lot like how the NFL-Heavy works regarding practices. Strength, flexibility, precision, and stanima being a whole lot more important than "grinding it out" during practice to prepare for "grinding it out" in a game.

After all, these players are already at peak physical conditioning, more important to fashion those skills towards an actual opponent, rather than each other.

I'm sure there is a balance somewhere between the two extremes.

QUACK!

Sant Rosa, thanks for this and the other WSJ posts.

Short practices have been part of Curt Cignetti's process throughout his coaching career.

Curt learned this process not from his time at Bama working for Saint Nick, but from his Dad, Frank Cignetti, Sr., who finished his career coaching the West Virginia Mountaineers.

On his way to his first head coaching job at Toledo in 1990, Saban was Frank Cignetti's DB coach at WVU in 1978-79. Before Toledo, Saban also coached for Don James at Nick's alma mater, Kent State, Syracuse, Ohio State, the year after working for Frank Cignetti, Navy, Michigan State, and the Houston Oilers.

Frank Cignetti's first coaching head job in college, like Curt's, was at a small school, Division II Indiana University Pennsylvania Crimson Hawks, never to be confused with the Crimson Tide.

Frank Sr., a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, taught his sons, Curt and Frank Jr., who coached for Pitt, the New York Giants, and the Green Bay Packers, to take care of their players. When you are coaching at IUP and WVU and not at a school with a deep roster like Ohio State, keeping players healthy is paramount.

Curt was Nick Saban's recruiting coordinator at Bama and helped Saban build one of CFB's deepest rosters. Curt was close to 50 years old when he took a $125,000.00 pay cut and left Bama for IUP. He got a 'decent' return on this bet on himself.

With only 136 teams (at least in theory) competing for a title, college football coaches are members of a small fraternity.

Destroy the Dukes! Chastise Chesney!

I wonder how that compares to Duck's in-season practices. I read that Ducks Tuesday practices are very physical.

Ducks supposedly monitor every athletes wear to keep them below certain thresholds, so it wouldn't be too big of a leap to dial down those thresholds in the future.

We do see a lot of practice injuries contact and non contact.

Also there certainly are different seasons to be breaking down and to be peaking. The fact bye weeks are so needed during the season tells me in season you could get by with a lot more walkthrough practices and be fine.

Out of season you need to be maximizing your breakdown and recovery consistently.

Hey Jon Joseph, thank you for the in-depth background on Coach Cignetti. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere but has been climbing the ladder for years.