DESTIN, Fla. – When the NFL recently banned the famed “Oklahoma Drill” and others like it from teams’ practice regimens, many wondered if college football soon follow suit.
Improving player safety was given as the main reason why.
Along with half-line, bull-in-the ring, and the Oklahoma Drill, these “character builders” have been part of the football fabric for decades. But do they actually build character? Coaches at the annual SEC Spring Meetings took varying stances on the subject.
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart acknowledges that staying safe is obviously top priority.
“The first thing you say when you say Oklahoma Drill: what is that? Everybody has a different perception of what that is. I know that everybody uses it different ways,” Smart said. “We’ve got a great medical staff. Ron Courson and his staff do a tremendous job, so two men, like battering rams, 10 yards apart? I would never do that. That’s not football. I think if you asked 100 coaches what an Oklahoma Drill is, you’d get 100 different answers, because everybody calls it something different. We’re really smart about the way we practice from an injury standpoint. We have one of the least injured teams in the last three years, and it’s because of the way we practice.”
Others, like South Carolina’s Will Muschamp, take a slightly different approach. While safety is also paramount for Muschamp, the Gamecock head coach said there is plenty of good that comes from having the drills.
“It’s a drill that teaches, offensively, to finish a block, to get your hands inside, to play with pad level, to do all the basic fundamentals you do on every single snap in a football game,” Muschamp said. “Defensively, same thing, great pad level, great explosion, teaches you to get off a block and make a tackle. It teaches a running back to finish a run, to run through contact. The basic fundamentals of what you would say happens on every single football play goes into that drill. There's no call being made. It’s man on man and lining up and whipping somebody’s ass. That’s what it all comes down to.”
Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt said his Volunteers wouldn’t be affected in any way, shape or form. The reason? Tennessee doesn’t use the drills.
“No, we don’t do that, so it really doesn’t affect us,” Pruitt said. “First of all, Bull in the Ring, I don’t know how it makes you a better football player. I did it when I was a kid. You stood there in a circle and there’s 30 people standing around, they call somebody’s name, and you don’t know where they’re at.
“Most of the time, when you play football, you know who the guy is who’s going to block you, and who’s got the ball. I don’t see how that game fits into playing football.”
Smart agreed.
While there are certainly aspects of the drill that come into play every day in practice, holding the drills in their purest form isn't something he sees as being required.
“I don’t see it culturally binding to put two young men 10 yards apart and ram them. I don’t know if that’s what you’re calling Oklahoma. Like I said, everybody interprets that differently,” he said. “It’s like the question we used to get about, are you going to be 'spread offense.' What is that? I don’t know how you guys see that. I have no idea.”
Considering the way Georgia practices, Smart says there’s really no need for the drills.
“Bonding to me is going out in 100-degree heat with 30 pounds of pads and a helmet and stuff on, and competing and going one on one with another man. You get all kinds of bonding in that,” he said.
It’s all about practicing—if you’ll pardon the pun—smart.
“When I was in the NFL, we practiced really smart there, too. You can imagine having one guy making 53 million, and another making 5, 6, or 7 million, you’re going to be smart about how you practice. I think as coaches, you’re always looking at that, so I don’t know what you define as Oklahoma drill,” Smart said. “I don’t know if we do it or not. We are as safe as we can be. We tackle three to four times in the spring, probably two or three times in the fall, live. I know a lot of coaches who tackle the entire preseason camp live. We don’t do that. We try to be smart in what we do.”
