It’s not as though Kansas University football players were sleeping in every day this summer, hitting the swimming pool, getting a tan and playing video games.
Nevertheless, the summer officially is over for the KU players, who will report today to Lawrence before another football season begins Wednesday.
Most of the players spent the summer in Lawrence anyway, enrolling in classes, participating in voluntary summer workouts with strength coach Chris Dawson, and maybe even making a few bucks with a part-time job.
Summer workouts wrapped up two weeks ago, and summer school finished last week. It gave the players a bit of downtime, but hopefully they didn’t get used to it.
Classes don’t pick back up until Aug. 18, so until then it’s all football, all the time.
“The kids will come in Wednesday and basically, that is a lot of non-football work,” KU coach Mark Mangino said. “We have our compliance office come in and have them fill out a number of forms as far as compliance and NCAA information they need.”
The players, especially the newcomers, also will spend Wednesday in meetings with their new coaches, in what Mangino calls “orientation day.”
Thursday will be the first official practice.
“It’s more physical measurements,” Mangino said of Thursday’s plan. “We call it a ‘measurement test’ on how well they are conditioned.”
That testing should turn out favorably. Mangino reported at the beginning of the summer that every scholarship player would stay in Lawrence for summer workouts, and all the incoming freshman would appear at some point – including freshman quarterback Kerry Meier, who Mangino said at Big 12 Conference media days “is one of the few high school prospects that ever showed up for the summer voluntary program in great shape.”
Mangino said the summer program was a success, and it undoubtedly means sharper practices right away. KU will pull the footballs out for the first time Friday in its first real practice. It will be the second of five days with only one practice before two-a-days begin next week.
KU is starting earlier than in past years, but it’s not the result of any new NCAA regulation. A school counts backward from the first game day (Sept. 3 for KU) to set a date for its first practice.
A team has 40 units. Each day between Sept. 3 and Aug. 18 (first day of class) counts as one unit, and each day before Aug. 18 counts as two. Sundays and days where teams don’t practice count as zero.
Kansas started Aug. 7 last year.
“We may be a couple days earlier,” Mangino said, “but we’re in line with all the Big 12 schools as far as the time between first practice and first game.”