Don’t get Logan Walls wrong. The Georgia Tech defensive tackle prefers his apartment, but he doesn’t mind spending preseason camp in a hotel.
“It’s just, I don’t know, having a roommate all the time and stuff, it’s not too bad right now, but after 18 days, you can imagine how it gets after 18 days,” Walls said.
Walls is on the diplomatic side.
“It’s a penitentiary,” said wide receiver Tyler Melton, flashing a devious grin.
After two years of staying in a dormitory during preseason camp, coach Paul Johnson has his players bunking in a nearby hotel because the school’s on-campus housing couldn’t accommodate the team this year. Tech also stayed in a hotel in 2008, Johnson’s first season. Buses pick them up in the morning and drop them off at Bobby Dodd Stadium, and they reverse the process in the evening. In between, there’s practices, meals, meetings and a few hours of down time in the locker room.
“It’s just all football, all the time,” Melton said. “It’s like the Twilight Zone.”
Johnson would contend that’s the point.
“I think it’s good to put ’em all together,” Johnson said. “They’re easier to keep track of.”
Thanks to a discounted rate at a nearby Marriott property, the final bill will be roughly $70,000. In the ACC, the practice is not unusual. Virginia, Duke and Miami also are staying in hotels this month. At Georgia, players stay in dorms. The argument can go either way: Let players remain comfortable in their own places or manage the process by keeping the team self-contained 24 hours a day and perhaps foster unity.
“When you were going back to your dorm, you were kind of going back to your room, closing the door and going straight to sleep,” linebacker Steven Sylvester said. “But now you have no choice but to be around the guys all the time, so it brings us closer together as a team.”
How else could Sylvester have learned that wide receiver Corey Dennis talks in his sleep?
“We were laying in the room. It was pitch black, and he started talking,” Sylvester said. “I got kind of nervous.”
Roommates were assigned randomly. Melton rooms with defensive back Jemea Thomas, in whom Melton has found a sympathetic cellmate. Melton cracked that the two spend their time marking their wall, counting the days until their release. After reporting Aug. 2, Tech will break camp Aug. 20.
“All we see is us,” Melton said. “No women.”
Singleness of focus, however produced, wouldn’t hurt the Jackets. Last year, poor attitudes undermined the team and played a role in Tech’s first losing season since 1994.
“You’ve got to have that type of brotherhood,” Thomas said, “because when it gets rough in a game or rough in a season, you don’t want to just fall apart.”
Players aren’t loaded with idle time, but have spent time hanging out in the hotel lobby or playing video games or the card game spades in the rooms.
“All jokes aside, I feel like we really do need this for bonding and team chemistry,” Melton said.
The rehabilitation of prisoner No. 84 is complete.
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