College football only allows a coach to be with his players two hours a week in the offseason; this includes film, organized football workouts, and, ALL mandatory football-related activities. The offseason in College football is an eight month period and those two hours a week during that time turn out to be about twenty practices. These rules applying to time with players affects all football coaches on staff except one, the strength coach. Personally, my stint in college football was not associated with a lot of winning, but I had the opportunity to work with so many different coaches I really received a unique perspective of not only the sport, but the, I’ll say, business side of things. In my five years I had (counting interim coaches) three head coaches, two offensive coordinators, three o-line coaches, and SIX strength coaches. The biggest differences in all of these coaches were in the strength coaches. Not only did these six different men look nothing alike, they ALL had different philosophies, techniques, and, “coach talk†(for those of you unfamiliar with “coach talk†just give me 110% of your attention and you’ll start to get it). My first strength coach, LOVED warming up with heavy jump ropes and working out at 6am. However, Coach ran on ‘Lombardi time’ so 6am to the football team was 5:45am to the rest of the world. Strength coach number four, believed that Olympic movements were the key to a successful and explosive football player, while strength coach number six, believed that Olympic movements only reflected explosion and didn’t develop it. So… what sets Pat Moorer apart from the other 120 some-odd other division one football strength coaches?
For one, he is a certified Master Strength and Conditioning Coach by the Collegiate Strength & Conditioning Coaches Association, which is the highest honor and certification you can receive in this field. To able to even apply for a M.S.C. certification you need “twelve years of valid employment history as a full-time strength and conditioning coach on the collegiate and/or professional-level…â€(cscssa.org). Coach Moorer had an impressive career at South Carolina as the director of strength and conditioning overseeing the training of all the student athletes. Moorer then went to Louisville where he was the head football strength and conditioning coach under head coach Charlie Strong, but before all of that…? Coach Moorer had been on an even more detailed level of strength and conditioning as the personal trainer of the NFL’s all-time leading rusher, Emmitt Smith. Being able to successfully train an individual and successfully train a group are two completely different schools of thought. Training groups of athletes requires an extraordinary amount of discipline and preparation to be able to account for and motivate so many different sized and shaped athletes within a group. Training individuals however, requires a more detailed plan of not only the human physiology but of the individual you are training. Personal training has to be just that… personal. This allows the athlete to be pushed harder and therefore have greater results but, the individual athlete has to be motivated differently than a group… To be wildly successful at both proves not only an impressive knowledge of human physiology, but human psychology.
Coach Moorer refers to himself as a “result oriented†coach; saying process is just as important… but they don’t measure the process. Not only does Moorer care about the quantitative results, he is noted as having “unbelievable passion in the student athletes he trainsâ€. He has been quoted saying that the UT football players are going to be in such great shape that they will be able to play the game the way it’s supposed to be played. Coach Moorer walked-on at the University of Florida and was the first true freshman to start for the nationally ranked Florida Defense. He earned a scholarship the next season and became a four-year starter, leading the Gators in tackles in both 1988 and 1989, and was also a team captain in 1989. Know that Coach Moorer fully understands how the game is supposed to be played. Known for being an extremely ‘hands on’ coach it’s not uncommon to see him jump in the workouts from time to time, particularly in a specialized workout routine that he has affectionately named ‘The Pit.’ “It’s not a place you want to go…†says Coach Moorer, ‘The Pit’ is the work out plan for injured and recuperating athletes, but make no mistake… it’s better to be practicing sore than try to take a day off and go to ‘The Pit’. If one of your limbs is injured don’t worry, you’ve got three more that work just fine! Elbow injuries, squat, lung, and, jump while knee injuries, push, pull, and, press. Most importantly, and perhaps most frighteningly, I have yet to see him smile in any picture, except one… In that one picture; he was standing in a squat rack with over 500lbs on the bar… he was in ‘The Pit’.
