Practice-only not so bad for Ga. State football players

By Carroll Rogers

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

For those unfamiliar with Georgia State coach Bill Curry's super-sized gift of persuasion, consider this:

For months, Curry dragged some 66 football players out of bed at dawn, bused them out to a high school stadium, ran them and practiced them as hard as they ever had been -- all with the next game only a distant promise.

Preparing for the inaugural 2010 season meant 60 practices for the sake of practice, which the Panthers wrapped up last week. Somehow, all the while, Curry managed to teach his players to live in the moment.

"We live in an ‘event' culture," Curry said. " ‘Oh man, it's almost time for the Super Bowl. It's almost time for Christmas. It's almost the weekend. It's Friday.' Sadly because of that, we miss out on one of what I believe to be the primary ingredients in being a happy person, which is to live in the moment ...

"When we all get gray and old," he continued, "we're going to look back at this and think we might have done a whole lot more than create a good football team. We might have taught somebody what it feels like to enjoy the moment without reference to some event that we hope will happen down the road."

Not that everybody enjoyed "gassers," the 212-yard sprints at the end of practice. Or the 6:30 a.m. start time for team meetings or 8 a.m. practices, which simplified class scheduling. Or the quagmire they practiced in some days at MLK Middle School, or the yellow jackets waiting for them at Lakewood Stadium.

But a funny thing happened along the way.

"I've developed a mentality where I don't dislike practice," said offensive guard Michael Davis, who doesn't even mind the 5 a.m. alarm either. "I really don't dread it in anymore. All this coaching and practice is only going to get me better."

Three-on-three drills notwithstanding, they say they've actually had some fun.

Running back Travis Evans was looking to spice up practice one day when he ran 50 extra yards on a running play and did a forward flip into a patch of kudzu.

"There might be broken glass in there," Curry said. "He doesn't care. So we had to say, ‘Travis, don't do flips into the kudzu.' "

But Evans kept doing the 50-yard sprints, even though Curry only asks backs for an extra 10 yards every play. Curry calls Evans one of the hardest-workers he's ever coached, covering his 17 years at Georgia Tech, Alabama and Kentucky.

"If I run 10 yards, I'd be selling myself short," Evans said. "I want to run at least 50 so when I break a long run in a game, it won't be a surprise to me or anybody else."

Attitudes like Evans' have helped shape what amounts to one collective redshirt year. The Panthers are all in it together. It's team-building without the ropes course.

"I think we're going to look back and laugh at how it was at the beginning and how close we are now," center Ben Jacoby said. "At the beginning, everybody had your close two, three friends ... "

"And it was just animosity everywhere," interjected Davis, showing chemistry-building progress himself as a guard finished his center's sentence. "You didn't know in the beginning if you were going to like somebody, if you ever could ever like them. And someone like that becomes your best friend later on."

The Panthers' new practice facility won't open until spring practice starts in February. So practice was either on the youth fields at MLK Middle or Lakewood Stadium, except for special occasions.

One morning in September, the buses skipped the usual left turn to go to Lakewood.

"I heard somebody say, ‘Well, the bus is lost again,' " Curry said. "And then there was a silence and Travis Evans started squealing like a child on Christmas morning. It was just this high-pitched falsetto scream. ‘The Dome, the Dome.' And then everybody started cheering."

The Panthers practiced nine or 10 times at the Georgia Dome, testing out the turf where they'll play next season, the acoustics and the Falcons locker room where they'll dress.

They held their final practice there last Friday.

"I love it," Davis said. "Just thinking about it now, I'm excited, anxious, ready for that first snap, first hit. It'll probably be more overwhelming than I can say right now. We'll just have to see."

One other thing about living in the moment for Georgia State? The future got a lot closer.