☕️ S&C Daily — They Said They'd Handle It

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A Georgia player who is late to a workout climbs the weight room stairs with a 45-pound plate in each hand and an 80-pound vest on. Two players recently decided they weren’t doing it. Rather than argue, Scott Sinclair sent two veterans over. They told him they’d handle it, then stayed with the two until the stairs were finished.

“When you got a player-driven team and not just coach-driven team, that’s one thing that I look at and say, all right, we got a chance,” Sinclair said.

Oregon linebacker Devon Jackson made this year’s Freaks List at No. 11 mostly on one number: a 24 mile per hour top speed off Oregon’s GPS, which The Athletic says is the fastest it has ever heard from a college player. His own head coach thinks it’s too high.

“I saw that number, and I don’t want to discredit Devon, but that’s a pretty high number,” Dan Lanning said. “Maybe it was in the 23s. I don’t know. But anything over 20 is impressive, especially at that position.” Teammate Dylan Williams said a linebacker who hits 19 to 21 is already fast, which is what makes 24 worth arguing about.

In a new SimpliFaster piece, strength coach Kosta Telegadas makes the case for Nordic curls as the hamstring exercise most programs are missing. Romanian deadlifts and glute bridges train the hamstring as a hip extensor. Strains happen doing its other job, when the muscle is long and braking the lower leg at the end of a sprint stride. Nordics train that directly. A review of 8,459 athletes found programs that added them cut hamstring injuries roughly in half. He builds athletes up slowly, from isometric holds to assisted reps to full range.

Nick Savage came with Lane Kiffin from Ole Miss to LSU. Asked what Savage brings, Kiffin made the case for the whole position instead, calling the strength coach “extremely critical and one of the most important people in the entire building.” His reasoning is the calendar. The strength staff has the players for months of offseason work before the coaching staff is allowed near them. Kiffin called Savage as good as anybody he has been around.

Arkansas ran artificial crowd noise at about 97 decibels during an 11-on-11 period Friday and decided it still wasn’t distracting the quarterbacks. So head coach Ryan Silverfield strapped a speaker to a backpack, handed it to strength and conditioning coach Noah Franklin, and told him to stand as close to them as he could get.

We covered Michigan earning the NSCA’s Collegiate Program of Distinction back in July. Norwich, a Division III school in Vermont, has now earned it too. Programs get judged on how they supervise athletes, train their staff, run the department and keep up the facility. The NSCA’s collegiate standard for supervision is one certified coach for every 20 athletes, with more coaches on the floor for beginners and harder lifts. It lasts three years and goes away if the head strength coach leaves. Scott Caulfield has run Norwich since 2021, after 11 years working for the NSCA.

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