Basic Training : NFL Teams Open Camp, an Annual Ritual That Players Hate and Coaches Say Is Necessary to Bond the Players and Separate the Unemployed

Paul (Tank) Younger, a Ram vice president now, was a Ram fullback in the 1950s. One afternoon, in 105-degree heat, he dragged his way to the end of another long day of training-camp practice at Redlands University.

Although Younger had starred in the scrimmaging that week, he was then starting his eighth NFL season. And so he was asked if he had made any plans to retire as a pro football player.

“Nobody ever retires from pro football,” he replied faintly. “You retire from training camp.”

To those who were there 40 years ago, NFL training camps were a memorably tough grind, the worst 2 1/2 months of every year. And although the exhibition season is briefer today, camp life remains drudgery, and most of the 2,200 candidates for the 28 pro clubs are dreading the next few weeks.

“Hardly anything is more fun than a football game,” Chicago Bear linebacker Mike Singletary said recently. “Hardly anything is worse than football practice.”

This year’s crop of rookies can expect to start finding that out as soon as today, when the Raiders reopen their Oxnard camp, and by the end of the week more than 1,000 NFL players will be back at work--some Rams among them.

Reporting dates at Irvine for Ram rookies and veterans are, respectively, Wednesday and a week from Wednesday.

Within days, they will be joined by the candidates for the rest of the clubs.

Camps still are long and hard, but at least they are shorter than those of 30 or 40 years ago.

“In the old days, we always had the pads on by the Fourth of July,” Younger said at Anaheim, where he is vice president of Ram player relations.

“One big difference is that we played six (exhibitions) every summer. These guys only play four.”

In baseball, by contrast, major league teams schedule 30 or more exhibition games during spring training each year--with few beefs.

Indeed, most baseball players, unlike football players, relish the exhibition season.

“(Spring training) was my favorite time of the year,” said former Angel Bobby Grich, who has rejoined the club as a minor league instructor.

Said Younger: “Any athlete would love a baseball training camp. Their No. 1 activity is playing golf.”

That may not be totally accurate, but golf is far from No. 1 in the NFL, where a typical camp day is a bleak concoction of morning meetings, morning practice, afternoon meetings, afternoon practice and evening meetings--and sometimes evening practice--leading to a mandatory curfew at 10:30 or 11.

For most of the 80 candidates in every camp, the future is clearly on the line. About half of them are about to be thrown out of football forever. To all, another specter, career-ending injury, is an everlasting threat.

To nearly every veteran, a more terrifying threat is the new kid--perhaps one who is faster, stronger and, maybe, more talented. To rookies and veterans alike, nights--far from home and family--are a jumble of battered and aching muscles and jarring worries.

Is this trip necessary?

Must grown men be confined to a teen-agers’ boot camp? Do great athletes need such a regimen? Why can’t the world’s finest football players approach the new season the way they do it all fall--living at home and commuting to practice like civilized businessmen?

“I’d love that,” said Miami Dolphin Coach Don Shula. “But football is a very tough game, and I believe that coming through a difficult existence in training camp (pays off).”

Houston Oiler Coach Jack Pardee, noting that most pro clubs begin work each summer in Eastern or Midwestern heat waves, calls the NFL training camp routine the only logical answer to the problem.

“(At camp), to beat the heat, we start the workday at daylight,” he said. “Then after it cools off, we work through till 10 o’clock or later every night. After all that, we might as well sleep at camp.

“Theoretically, everybody could go home when the workday is over, but you’d have to be back shortly after dawn. Football players on two-a-days need a lot of rest, and you don’t get much rest commuting.”

Pardee adds that anybody can stand anything for a month.

“When I was playing (linebacker) for the Rams (in the 1960s), we spent most of July, August and September at their Redlands training camp,” he said. “That was unreasonable. Most teams break camp these days after four or five weeks.”

Al LoCasale, the Raiders’ general manager, cites two persuasive reasons for taking the club out of town each July, instead of enjoying life on the Westside as usual.

“You could have your training camp here (at El Segundo),” LoCasale said. “But there are too many distractions here for the players, who have responsibilities to their families and others when they’re home. Secondly, we’d beat up the practice fields. The fields need a breathing period between mini-camps and (fall practice).”

During the Rams’ Younger-Pardee era, when $10,000 was a huge salary, the players had off-season jobs and often reported to camp out of condition. Their successors today are mostly year-round football players, working out month after month.

Even so, said Seattle Seahawk Coach Tom Flores, they aren’t in game shape when camp begins.

“You can only get in football condition by playing football,” he said. “That’s one reason most of us will be traveling to other (camps) to scrimmage other clubs again this summer.”

Within the next few weeks, for example, there will be scrimmages between the Rams and San Diego Chargers, and scrimmages between the Raiders and Dallas Cowboys and the Raiders and Phoenix Cardinals.

The NFL’s month-long exhibition season will begin Aug. 1. It will include three overseas games--Houston vs. Dallas at Tokyo Aug. 2, Denver vs. Miami at Berlin Aug. 15 and Washington vs. San Francisco at London Aug. 16.

The Rams will open the exhibition season at Seattle Aug. 6, the Raiders at San Francisco Aug. 8.

For their regular-season openers, both again will be out of town, the Rams at Buffalo Sept. 6, the Raiders at Denver that night.

Four months later, a two-week break appears in the postseason schedule between the conference title games Jan. 17 and Super Bowl XXVII at the Rose Bowl Jan. 31.

Of the nine NFL teams bringing in new coaches this year, two chose retreads: Chuck Knox, who is returning to the Rams, and Ted Marchibroda, resuming at Indianapolis. In Seattle, Flores has succeeded Knox. Sam Wyche has gone south to Tampa Bay.

Rising to head coach are four former position coaches, including Green Bay’s Mike Holmgren, whose $200,000 at San Francisco last year made him the NFL’s highest-paid assistant.

Bill Cowher, who made $110,000 at Kansas City, is now in charge at Pittsburgh; and Don Shula’s son, David, formerly Dallas’ highest-paid assistant at $121,250, has moved into Wyche’s shoes in Cincinnati.

Dennis Green, once a 49er assistant, left Stanford to take over the Minnesota Vikings.

Another college coach, Bobby Ross, left Georgia Tech to get into the NFL at San Diego. The Chargers also have hired, as defensive coordinator, a veteran college athletic director, Bill Arnsparger of Florida, who under Shula at Miami 20 years ago was the NFL’s highest-paid assistant at $100,000.

Ross needs a training camp, he said, because, among other things, the Chargers are putting in the no-huddle offense with a young quarterback, John Friesz.

From New England, Coach Dick MacPherson of the Patriots said he needs a training camp for a more familiar reason.

“Creative people have to get away periodically to refocus,” he said. “Most well-run corporations gather their executives together somewhere every year or so. The idea is to get a bonding.”

Football, in MacPherson’s view, is like that.

“Priests go on retreats,” he said. “We go to training camp.”