☕️ S&C Daily — They Have a Science Here

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Texas A&M edge Anto Saka came in at No. 31 on this year’s Freaks List, up from 56, and spent the day after it published handing the credit to his strength coach. Tommy Moffitt ran LSU’s program for years before A&M hired him in 2023.

“We’re a real big Olympic lifting type program, real big on power output and explosiveness, and that’s done wonders for me,” Saka said. “All my numbers have skyrocketed. Probably on all my major lifts, at least 40 pounds. So they have a science here, and it works.”

The testing backs him up. The Northwestern transfer put on 15 pounds this offseason and still ran 21.9 miles per hour on GPS, at 254 pounds with 8.2% body fat. He benched 370, cleaned 345 and squatted 565 this summer.

Writing for Strength Coach Network, Dakota Wilson makes the case that the job stops being about coaching lifts the further up you go. He built Ouachita Baptist’s athletic performance department in 2024 and now runs it across all 17 of its Division II programs. His athletes see him for an hour or two a day. The other twelve go to everyone else.

What nobody prepared him for: sorting resumes and interviewing candidates, budget reviews, facility projects with donors who want their opinions heard, emergency action plans, and scheduling problems after hours. His argument is that the job is to build systems rather than programs, because a workout lasts a day, a culture lasts a season, and a system outlives whoever set it up. “The weight room is still where I’m most visible,” he writes. “It just isn’t where I’m most valuable.”

Colin Kenyon took over Tulane’s strength program in December at 29, replacing Rusty Whitt, who followed Jon Sumrall to Florida. He left the winter program alone and rebuilt the summer around running less.

Repetitive gassers went out. In came sessions built off Catapult GPS, each player running a prescribed distance for his position. “Every practice, every run, we know down to the exact yard what it takes to play a football game,” Kenyon said. Tulane’s receivers ran about 91,000 yards last summer and 79,000 this one.

The speed went up anyway. Running backs averaged 20.9 miles per hour last year and 22.2 now. Receivers went from 20.8 to 21.4. Kenyon also runs NordBord testing on hamstrings and hired Markus James off Texas’s staff as associate director for his soft-tissue work. “It’s a war of attrition,” he said. “If you’re not healthy by November, you have no chance to win.”

Miami has been healthier since Ervin Young returned as director of sports performance in 2025, and head coach Mario Cristobal put the credit on Young and the sports science staff for the way the Hurricanes are able to practice. “You train to be able to practice, and you practice to be able to play,” Cristobal said.

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